My computer hates me and Staples may too.

Last year in January I bought a Compaq laptop from Office Depot.
It has slowly accumulated little problems.
Perhaps it is attempting to try my resolve.
I'm not sure.

When I bought the computer, I also purchased the LIFETIME guarantee, that it will work. The salesman explained that I could drop it off the Empire State building any year from now and they
would have to fix it for free, or replace it with something current. Sometimes, I have been tempted to do exactly that.

Two weeks ago, my touch pad stopped working.
But, here's the odd thing. It works fine, UNTIL I sign into my administrative account. Then, it's stuck. Then the cursor won't move at all.

So, I took it into Office Depot to let them analyze the problem for free. They got around the problem by using an optical mouse plugged into a USB port and then ran an online program to analyze the computer statis. They found nothing wrong with it, but although I have McCafee antivirus, since I have no anti-malware software, they speculated that perhaps malware was the cause and they wanted $169 to remove this supposed malware.

Hmmm. Call me suspicious if you like, but I've loaded virus analytical software online on other computers and they ALWAYS come up with multiple viruses even though there aren't any, just so you buy their program. So, I told them "no thanks". That I would buy a brand new laptop for $329 before I would pay $169 to remove malware or viruses. I figure, that way I would get more RAM, a larger harddrive, faster processor, etc..

However, at this time I decided to buy the optical mouse and plug it into the USB port, as they did. The technician warned me that this would not solve the root of the problem, which was PROBABLY due to malware. I said, for $10 I'm willing to try it first and see. It has worked out very well for the past 12 days.

Five days ago, however, the power source stopped working. Now, you can speculate, that is is also due to supposed malware, but I do not believe it for one minute. So, I went back to Office Depot and was informed, that they no longer carry power sources. They suggested, that I go to Radio Shack or Best Buy.

I went to Radio Shack and they wanted $127 for a universal powerpack. Ouch ! For essentially a power cord ?!?! No friggin' way ! So, I went to where I thought CompUSA was, but perhaps they went out of business, or moved.

There is a Staples Store now in their place. So, I walked in and bought the power pack there for $80 plus tax = $85.60. I still wasn't happy with this price, but used this for several days and experienced no further problems. I found out that the Staples return policy is 14 days with "no questions asked".

This allowed me to get back online and subsequently, I found a new one on eBay for $15 and bought that. I got it on Saturday and have used it with no problems for two days.


I returned the $85 one to Staples this morning for a refund.

Try to rip me off, will ya ?!?!?