Hey! it's important
June 14, 2006
I’ve been having computer problems over the last few days. My Fujitsu Lifebook is continually crashing and I’m getting a “2060 System Timer Error” message when I try and boot up. I don’t have a back up computer so it’s fairly serious.
The machine is out of warranty (just) and Fujitsu will “have a look at it” by sending it to the UK – that will take a minimum of 2 weeks. I’ve phoned 10 laptop repair places in Dublin and none of them can help me.
So as an alternative to banging my head against the wall I’m trying to understand what’s going on here. I’m feeling like the problem isn’t serious enough to warrant attention from the fixers. I’m feeling stupid because I don’t have the jargon to understand what the problem is and I haven’t a clue what to do next in terms of having it repaired.
I’m not looking for therapy here – some sympathetic murmerings and a list of who might be in a position to help me solve my problem would be a good starting point. But being left with my problem and the disinterest of people who might potentially be able to help is deeply frustrating.
When I’m working with clients – I don’t get to decide what’s important and what’s not. If they think it’s important then it is – my job is to come up with creative ways of engaging with them and it. I’m rarely disinterested and if I can’t help then I’ll try and steer them in direction of someone who can. In the meantime, I have some phone calls to make to try and salvage my co-dependent relationship with my machinery!
I’m sorry to hear about your tech woes. In your last paragraph, I think you’ve tapped into a significant difference between free-lance entrepeneurs & folks who have salaried jobs. If you blow off a client’s concerns as “unimportant,” you won’t get a paycheck. But some hired gun working in the Customer Service department of a computer manufacturer will get her or his paycheck whether your problem gets fixed or not.
So there’s a world of difference, I think, between how you do business & how they do business.
I think there’s some truth in that to be honest and in ireland the “celtic tiger” has contributed to a sense that there’ll always be another customer around the corner. I managed to find a company that will repair the computer (thankfully, although I’m shuddering at the thought of the bill) and a kind hearted friend has given me her laptop for the duration…I now get to learn how to find my way around a mac!
As for the laptop, a good rule in diagnostics is this, If the problem is consistent, and repeatable, it hardware. If the the issue is random and unpredictable it’s a software problem.
With the problem you describe, it sounds like hardware, and will have to get fixed sometime. If it’s only a boot time failure, then you could delay, if however it crashes your system when you are using it, then sooner.
Laptops are always a problem to fix as most of the components are soldered to the mother board and are either custom chips, or hard to find replacements. Usually only the vender will carry the spares.
If you send in your system, do backup your disk as best you can, as that may be the cause of the problem. If they replace it and it contains private information you will loose it.
On more thing on any physical materials issue, If it moves, it breaks Disk drives move the most, so they break the most.
Hi Branedy thanks for the good advice. I’m a religious backer-upper after too many bad experiences so my data is safe. I’ve left the machine in for a repair so we’ll see what happens. It strikes me as strange that so many people work on laptops these days and yet they seem to be difficult to repair – they’re not exactly disposable yet and are generally significalntly more expensive than desk tops..I wonder what’s going on?