Just as i think things are getting better i've had a pretty crappy couple of days. For about a week or so my monitor would suddenly go into standby mode while i was working on it and i couldn't turn it back on unless i turned it off at the socket and waited about 20 minutes and then it would come on again fine. Got to admit that i wasn't too bothered as the monitor came with a 3 year guarantee so if it went tits up i can take it back. Well its 18 months old now and that seems to be the lifespan of a lot of things nowadays. Well yesterday, while i was working on the edit there was a nice pop and a trickle of smoke coming out of the monitor. R.I.P. Gateway monitor. Well, like i said i wasn't too bothered. Well the store where i purchased it from is about a minutes walk away from me. So off i went, with the monitor and all its original packaging and the receipt to the store to get this thing either repaired or swapped. What a waste of time. Firstly they told me that it was only guaranteed for a year, even though when they sold it me it was advertised as three. I showed them the receipt and it stated 1 year warranty + extra cover 3. The they said that it was only 3 months extra warranty and not a 3 year guarantee, which was total bollox as i wouldn't have paid the price i did for a monitor that only had 1 year cover plus 3 extra measly months. I don't know anywhere that would ever offer just 3 extra months. I argued my case a lot then one of the staff came over and said that it was gateway that were offering the 3 year guarantee and not them. At last a result and someone that knows what they are talking about. They offered to ring up gateway to arrange a collection or swap for a different model so everything was sorted....
or so i thought....
The guy came back and asked for my full details and the receipt, then went back to talk to the people at gateway. A few minutes later he returned and said that they had no record of an warranty in my name. He asked me if i had filled in the warranty card and returned it to Gateway but i never had a warranty card with the monitor as i was told when purchasing that the receipt was my guarantee. They then said that the warranty card would have been given to me or that it would have been in the monitor box. Well i still had all the manuals & paperwork still in the box and there was no warranty. He said that there was nothing they could do but he would give gateway a ring again to see if there was anything he could do. But he came back and they refused to do anything.
So there you go. Don't buy anything made by gateway as they will just rip you off if anything goes wrong. Their attitude is just "computer says NO" (little Britain fans will get that one. lol) Admittedly the one guy at the shop did try his best and did try to figure out a way to get them to honour the warranty so i'm not pissed at the shop.
But with everything that gone on recently i almost feel like giving up ( but i know i won't). I've borrowed my daughters portable DVD player that has a video input and using the TV output on my pc i have a very vice 600 x 400 desktop which i can't do bugger all on. MY god, how the hell did we do anything on computers when all monitors were that resolution?
The couple of donations i received the other day i already spent on getting some styrene and a few lights towards build the 1 metre stardestroyer. Yes i will be building that for this edit instead of waiting for ROTJ:R because, after trying to replace many of the stardestroyers that needed to go, i decided that it wasn't worth building a small one when i would have to build a large scale one for ROTJ:R that i could use for every shot needed.
So now i have no monitor and its going to be about february next year before i'll have any money towards it. And before anyone says it, yes i have backed up all the files for the edit. I make a backup every week, including a backup of the backup just in case, so if a hard drive dies then i'm covered.
I guess a lot of the hardware problems are due to the lifespan just coming to an end. after all they say the lifespan of something nowadays is 5 years and that is based on a use of only a few hours per day. When you consider that this PC is usually on 24/7 its not surprising really
so, yes, you can say i'm gutted :(