AbsoluteRaleigh Laptop Repair Blog

New Macs were shown today

2008-10-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

As you can see by the AP photo here, the new Mac laptops were shown today as rumored.

The new Mac laptops have Intel CPUs & Nvidia video chips (despite all of the recent problems with the Nvida mobile chips), LED lit displays, aluminum cases and some new features. Overall it does look like a nicely built machine.

Apple released a little infomercial on the new notebooks on Youtube here:

Tammy's Baby has Arrived

2008-10-14T18:20:00.000-07:00

For those of you who know Tammy, you will be happy to know that she popped her kid out on Sunday 10/12/08! =)

AbsoluteRaleigh on the Air with WTRU

2008-10-10T20:01:00.000-07:00

October 11, 2008, we will be on the air with Robby Dilmore of Robby's Hobbies. Robby's Hobbies airs on WTRU every Saturday at 11:00AM.

Listen online with WTRU Streaming Audio.

New Apple laptops on October 14 2008?

2008-10-10T19:51:00.000-07:00

October 14, 2008 new Apple laptops are being unveiled.

Apple likes to create a little stir online about their products. What will it be? A new laptop? Will it be compatible with Microsoft's operating systems? Will this help Apple's stock price?

Our main question is: Will the new laptops be completely proprietary and have Apple offering insane repair prices that we can probably beat by 75%?

We'll see!

Geek-A-Thon #15

2008-10-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

October 17 - 19, 2008 is Geek-A-Thon #15. The event is put together by Kramden.org. #15 is sponsored by Lenovo and others. For more details go to Kramden.org.

Blog Action Day 2008 is coming

2008-10-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

October 15, 2008 is Blog Action Day 2008. Participating bloggers are asked to put up a post, video or podcast about poverty. Click on the banner above for more information.

ASUS EeePC Online Contest

2008-09-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

ASUS has an online contest going on right now. It is called "My Summer. My Adventure. My EeePC." Users submit their summer adventures and the most popular stories win an EeePC. For details visit the ASUS site here.

Is Dell leaving North Carolina?

2008-09-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago the North Carolina General Assembly gave Dell around $280,000,000.00 in tax incentives to open a plant here in North Carolina and create some jobs. Some people were furious and lawsuits started, trying to stop the taxpayer's hard earned money from being thrown out the window. Dell was still given the incentives anyways, contingent on the factory meeting certain employment and local-investment goals by 2015.

But now the factory may close. Dell sells a lot of computers but may sell many/all of it's factories in n attempt to improve profitability. They're selling more laptops than desktops now and the laptops aren't manufactured at Dell's factories.

So, is Dell leaving North Carolina? Will the Winston-Salem factory close? And what will happen if/when it does?

We'll see...

Ref: Reuters article

Sony TZ Laptop Recall

2008-09-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Sony Laptop Recall:

Model affected:
* VGN-TZ100 series
* VGN-TZ200 series
* VGN-TZ300 series
* VGN-TZ2000 series

What to do:
If you have one of these models, call Sony at 1-888-526-6219.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says:
"Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed".

Sony's site says:
"they can continue to use the unit. However, they should still call 1-888-526-6219 at their earliest convenience to set up an inspection and possible repair."

References:
CPSC's Notice
Sony's Notice

Joseph Foster Writes Bad Checks, Durham NC

2008-09-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

Joseph Foster of Durham, NC writes bad checks.

He wrote one here. We asked nicely for a few weeks to get the bill paid but it turns out Joseph is a criminal and makes a living out of defrauding people and businesses in the area.

He is a thief and a liar and does this on a regular basis.

We will update this post once he is arrested (they always are).

We will be closed on Friday Aug 29

2008-08-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

August 29, 2008 we will be closed. We will re-open September 2, 2008. We rarely close a day early but we all needed a break! Everyone please have a fantastic weekend!

-Absolute Computers

Dell Precision M90 bad video card

2008-08-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

We have had more Precision M90s in lately with bad video cards.

the latest one was still under Dell warranty. Upon trying to get the parts covered under warranty, Dell informed us that they are out of the video cards and can not get more. They said the Precision M90 laptops under warranty that have a bad video card will be replaced. We are currently waiting to see what they are going to replace it with. We just know it will be something similar or newer. This blog post will be updated once we have more information.

For Precision M90 laptops with a bad video card that are out of warranty, well, not so good news. We have found a few but they seem to go for $400 - $500 when they are available.

Toshiba Satellite ERROR F3E1000001

2008-08-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

If you encounter error F3E1000001 while running your recovery disks on a Toshiba Satellite A105 or P105, it is most likely because the hard drive is BAD.

As of right now, this is not documented on Toshiba's site.

This threw up for a loop for a few minutes today- a customer's P105 came in with a bad hard drive. Our new hard drive kept giving us an error- it turned out the new hard drive was bad as well. It would show up in BIOS just fine but Windows XP Media Center Edition couldn't find it. Running DFT revealed the drive was defective. Drive #3 is in and working! Yay!

AbsoluteRaleigh on Twitter

2008-08-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

We set up a twitter account.

Follow us on Twitter here.

First Citizens Bank CRASHED

2008-08-04T14:25:00.001-07:00

Well, this is weird, but our bank just crashed.

First Citizens Bank is down. We began experiencing problems where our credit card would not work. We tried calling 1-888-FC-DIRECT and the line would say the call volume was too great and hang up. Then we tried to log into online banking but just got a message that reads "Notice to Online Banking Customers - Online Banking is currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and appreciate your patience."

It has been down for hours. If it isn't fixed soon, we will not be able to process credit cards, either! There are no details on their website as to what is wrong.

October Break in

2008-08-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

We just bumped into a pic of our front door that was smashed in back in October 2004 and thought we'd add it to our blog. The 3 people that did this didn't get away for long, they were thrown in jail a month or two later. An anonymous tipster had their license plate #. We're "prepared" for this type of situation; some of our retail inventory was stolen but no customer computers were harmed.

Sales Tax Holiday 2008 is here!

2008-07-31T09:28:00.000-07:00

The NC Sales Tax Holiday is here again already. We will have several laptops and computers available, all tax free! We'll be open Friday until 6PM and we'll also be open this Saturday from 10AM - 2PM.

Used Dell C640 Laptops:
P4 2Ghz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, XP Pro, $325!

Used P3 Dell Laptops from $199 - $299!

Used IBM ThinkPad T23 Laptops:
1.1Ghz, 512MB RAM, 20GB HD, DVD/CDRW, XP Pro, $349!
(Several available. Great condition and very reliable).

Used IBM Desktop Computers:
P4 2.8Ghz, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, CD, XP Pro, $175!
(These are fast machines! and the memory and hard drive are brand new! Add a DVDRW for +$39)

We hope to see you on Friday or Saturday at Absolute Computers!

Absolute Computers
2436 SW Cary Pkwy
Cary NC 27513
(919) 468-3999
www.AbsoluteRaleigh.com

This was also posted to our newsletter here:
http://groups.google.com/group/absoluteraleigh

More info on the Sales Tax Holiday:

Computers of $3,500 or less per item and computer supplies of $250 or less per item will be exempt August 1, 2, 3 of 2008.

Details on what else is exempt from NC State Sales Tax may be found on the NC Department od Revenue's page here:
http://www.dor.state.nc.us/taxes/sales/salestax_holiday.html

Alienware M5750 Video Card Problems

2008-07-29T08:11:00.001-07:00

Another Alienware Area-51 M5750 came in for diagnostics this week.

Our customer needed the machine for its speed and graphics. But, yet again, the video card is defective. They just don't get adequate cooling. The unit is just over a year old and Alienware won't sell him or us a video card.

Our customer now has a $3,200.00 doorstop.

We have similar ThinkPad laptops come in- we just make a quick call, spend $200, and the next morning a video card is at our door. But not with Alienware. It appears that they had just enough cards made to sell the laptops and that is it. There are no video cards on the market for this machine.

If you want an interesting read check out this opinion article on Hexus.net here.

Sony PCV-W20 Keyboard Part Number 147752712

2008-07-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

We had a PCV-W20 / PCVW20 computer come in this week. Coffee was spilled onto the keyboard and the keyboard was bad. Finding a replacement keyboard was difficult. The part # on the back of the keyboard was incorrect. When we finally found the correct keyboard p/n, Sony was the only place that had one and they wanted nearly $200 for it. To fix the computer we put a USB keyboard on it. The cost of the keyboard was $10.

We noticed quite a few people online are looking for this part. For all of those interested, the current correct part # for the keyboard is 147752712 (or 1-477-527-12).

Cary Computer Service & Repair Award

2008-07-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

Some company tried to sell us this plaque (via spam email for $100). While we would probably win the award if there was one, this is just one of those companies that is selling a vanity award. It looks neat enough for a blog post though, so here it is. =)

HP ZE4145 vs. Super Glue

2008-07-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

We had a HP ZE4145 laptop come in for our backlight repair service this week. Our customer told us that the machine worked fine one day, then the next it had no display. They could slightly see what was going on but the backlight was not lighting up.

Note: Most of the machines we get in for backlight repair actually do not need a backlight.

Anyways upon inspection we noticed the hibernate button was stuck down. Well, it wasn't just stuck down but it was glued down with some super glue.

Fortunately on this model the little hibernate button resides on it's own little board. We had the board in stock @ $29. We charged our customer our minimum labor charge and got this one back out the door. When our customer came to pick it up they told us that their 10yr old had been playing with the glue near the computer the night before it quit working which explained everything.

For more information on backlight repair please see our backlight FAQ.

iMac 24" Repair

2008-07-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

We had an iMac 24" in this week for Data Recovery. This customer lives all the way up near VA but couldn't find anyone to work on the machine. Even with the OS corrupt we were able to retrieve the requested data from the GPT partition.

The iMac is a neat machine. We can't say we'd recommend it for everyone- it is stylish and worth around $1,900, but very proprietary. If you want to add the latest video card or DVDRW to it- it isn't going to happen- but that is not what the machine is meant for- it is just supposed to be a neat looking computer with a huge screen- or at least that was our impression of it- we're not really Mac experts over here.

Getting at the hard drive was a task- we should have documented it but didn't. If you are reading this and need disassembly instructions, well, we don't have them. Just go out and buy some suction cups prior to working on the machine.

July 4, 2008

2008-07-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

Happy Fourth of July!

We'll be open again Monday morning (7/7/8).

What is inSide919.com?

2008-07-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

inSide919.com is a community resource for business people working and living within the 919 Area Code of North Carolina.

Our profile on inSide919 can be viewed here.

Dell Registered Partner AbsoluteRaleigh.com

2008-07-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

Dell has updated it's reseller program and we can now announce that we are a Dell Registered Partner. We'll primarily carry notebooks; we'll start with some Vostro machines.

Simply due to our cost being nearly the same as yours, they'll likely be cheaper to buy directly from the manufacturer and we will attempt to add some value. This will be some added memory and the convenience of being able to buy it right away. Many people have to wait two weeks (or longer) for the manufacturer to get a machine built and shipped.