Anything I can do about a stolen laptop?

Last night my 4 month old NX860XL got stolen out of my house, along with some other stuff. I had the full 3 year on site service and accidental damage protection warranty, and although I know it wouldn't cover a lost/stolen computer, is there any way I can call gateway and claim that it is broken and have them ship me a replacement without having the laptop with me any more? This just sucks, I can claim it on homeowner's insurance but there is a $1000 deductible. Anyone have any experience with a stolen laptop and have any advice on the cheapest way to get a replacement?

 

use your homeowner's insurance. that is probably the best way. make a claim and eat the $1,000. sucks, man. sorry about that! maybe if the other stuff that was stolen you can live without, you can use some insurance money from that stuff to replace the computer?

 

I wouldn't try lying.

Have you called the police?

 

Wouldn't lying be insurance fraud? Just take your losses and live with it

 

You request a replacement without the original, that's fraud. Not to mention Gateway will charge you every penny for the new one.

Fraudster.

Assuming you have to make a claim anyway, just put the laptop on it.

Fraud.

 

There is a police report and I don't want to commit some heinous act of fraud, I was just curious if there is some sort of way with warranty claims that you don't need to present proof of having the laptop still, which in hindsight is totally absurd. Guess I'll just have to swallow the cost of the homeowner's insurance deductible and live with it.

 

Call Gateway and just say your laptop got stolen and you had all the warranties and crap, Is there anything you can do for me?

It's worth a try.

 

GW can at least call and cancel the warranty. If it ever breaks, they won't be able to have it serviced without money. And repairs aren't cheap.

Did you have a serial number recorded somewhere? Make sure you give the police that.

 

1. File police report. Unfortunately, it's unlikely you'll ever see your computer again, but you never know and you might get lucky if they catch the guy in the next couple days.

2. Contact Gateway and report the computer stolen. If he tries to get service on it, they'll know.

3. Check ebay and craigslist ALL THE TIME to see if the guy puts it up for sale. I would not be at all surprised if you find it this way.

4. You may be able to find some creative way to replace the computer or at least lessen the $ blow buy talking to your h/o rep, credit card rep, or ?

5. Good luck.

 

and buy lojack for your next laptop..its basically a GPS system in your laptop,. i plan on buying it..i'm going to college next year..it's pretty dangerous for a piece of equipment like a laptop..and it's only 50$ for a year service..assurance that your laptop can be tracked when stolen.

 

Good advice. Honesty's best even when it's painful like this.

 

I think lo jack can be wiped if thief smart enough to re-format drive and install fresh OS. I'm behind the times but was not a hardware anti-theft chip planned for the new laptops?

Me, I use BIOS password. They can swap drives but laptop MB BIOS can only be defeated by Dell, AFAIK. Hey, it's free.

 

Lojack cannot be defeated by a OS reinstall. It embeds itself into the BIOS in most notebooks, which basically means it will even survive swapping the HDD for a fresh one.

Trust me, I know. I reviewed it and purposefully tried to crack their system. There are a few flaws, but a reinstall-crack isn't one of them.

 

Thanks, I'll check out your review.

 

Well, first, a thief probably won't know enough to even know lojack is on the system. That's probably why they chose thievery as a profession. And two, the only good a BIOS password does is prevent the owner from getting in after he forgets the password. All BIOSes have a "universal" password that takes 2 seconds to look up.

 

Now I'm confused, you stated under Cons: "Most likely can be defeated by re-installing the OS." Was the BIOS embedding not mentioned?

BTW here's a link to someone who has had problems with Lojack: http://cryptome.org/lojack-hack.pdf

Do you know if his problem is valid or the software has been fixed to addressed this?

Thanks

 

Valid points and understood. However for some laptops you need to generate the "master key" with the service tag number. I goggled last year and found two people who claim that if you send them the service tag number, they will send you the key. All for just $90 ! As with DVDs there is always a way, no?

My point was that the BIOS lock is free and enough to frustrate the average thief. Of course if the owner forgets the password, if he owns a dell, just calls in and submit his service tag free of charge.

 

You could also call Gateway support center and let them know that your laptop has been stolen, etc. give them the police report number, etc. and then when or if the person that stole it calls in for repairs, they will have to give the serial number. I am hoping that you have the serial number already and have registered it with Gateway already when you purchased it. Gateway support will then see that it has been stolen and can get the person's information and then contact you. Just an idea. I hope this helps. God Bless