Sales Tax Holiday 2008 is here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Fourth of July!

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

What is inSide919.com?

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

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.

Another Bad AC Adapter

Someone from up near Virginia was referred to us the other day. They drove all the way here, spending $40+ in gas. We signed the machine in and told them it would be a few days before we could get to it and that we would be giving them a call. We told them we'd ship the unit back to them for $15 so that they wouldn't have to spend $40 in gas and 4 hours on the road.

They were referred here by another computer store who told them they would have to bring the machine here for a power jack repair.

We went to check the unit out and to our surprise it simply had a bad AC adapter. We had exact replacements in stock @ $49. They were thrilled that the repair was a third of what they thought it would be. Return S/H to them was $15.

MacBook Pro Repair 90% off

To be perfectly honest, we have almost avoided Mac laptops for years. None of us here are Apple "fanboys". At the same time, we do see why many people like the machines and why some of those people would have no use for a Windows machine- and that is fine.

We still offer free diagnostics on Apple laptops. While we do not know a whole lot about the software troubleshooting and repairing a Mac is nearly the same as many other laptops.

Anyways, the other day "Matt" brought in a Mac. He had spilled some juice on it. Apple told him the repair was a flat rate of $1,200. What the heck?! Again, we are not very familiar with Apple, so if anyone knows what is going on PLEASE let us know. Lately we have been hearing all kinds of horror stories like this. The mainboard was a fraction of $1,200. Better yet, we simply opened up his machine, cleaned up the spill, put it back together and it worked fine! (There was a little luck involved here). Anyways Matt's bill was $120. Even if it needed parts, Matt's bill would NOT have been over a thousand bucks.

Does apple not have access to their own parts? Are they abusing customers? Are the customers making this all up? Do they just want to sell more stuff? I have no idea still. We'll have to run some of our own tests and try to figure out what is going on.

Download Day Certificate for AbsoluteRaleigh.com

Yay, we got a Download Day certificate.

Thanks Mozilla! =)

FireFox 3 set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. There were 8,002,530 downloads.