Hope it's still working. I had a similar bad experience with a now well known box store brand when I went to install a second hard drive. The manual basically said, put it in the slot and connect it to the extra plugs. The cable in the computer didn't have extra plugs, so in a rush I bought a new cable. Still in a rush I got the cable connector into the wrong pins and burnt out the main board. It used cheap connectors where it was pretty easy plug the cable in wrong. Quality computers use connectors that can't be plugged in wrong.

The computer also was under warranty. My attitude was that yes, I had plugged the cable in wrong but it probably wouldn't have happened if the manual had been right. I wouldn't have started a simple job and then ended up thrashing around for a cable that I supposedly didn't need. I talked to the 1-800 support folks and said that to me it seemed to be a matter of shared liability to me and maybe I could get a break on a new main board. No dice, and the price they quoted for the somewhat obsolete board was more than the price of an entirely new computer of the same type from a competitor. Corporate policy designers often turn companies into complete jerks or maybe it's just that bureaucracy steals responsibility and discretion from the people who have to do the support work with customers.

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