That's screwed up. I had to hire an attorney, it took 2 and a half years of waiting, and finally got a hearing in front of a federal judge. After only 15 minutes or so of the 30 minute hearing, he stopped the proceedings and awarded me a fully favorable bench decision. It's a shame for sick ones have to hire an attorney and go in front of a federal judge to prove you're too sick to work.
Two months later, in Sept 2008, I finally got what I was owed, with back pay from July 2006 through that present time. But that wasn't the end of it, my long term disability insurance company from my job wanted their money refunded, because I won my SSDI claim. I was allowed to deduct the attorney's fees, but had to write over an $18,000 check back to them.
And worse yet, my insurance coverage that I have now is not comparable to what I had at work. I've had to appeal twice for my 100mcg fentanyl patches, of which I wear not only 1, but 2 at all times, and change them every 72 hours. Unless you're a cancer patient, the "normal" standard is 1 patch at a time. And still need some Demerol for breakthrough pain, as much as 50mg every 4 hours. The generic is no good, I need the brand name drug. It was 100mg every 4 hours, but toxic levels were building up in my liver, so the dosage was reduced, and I have to deal with the remaining pain myself. As far as my overall health costs (out of pocket) goes, I spend almost $500/monthly, not counting my Medicare premium, a $100 increase from last year. One third of my net benefit goes to my health care. And like you, haven't had a raise since 2009.
So I'm in the same boat, I can't afford all of the computer that I want, but have to be content with what I can afford, and learn from past mistakes, like when I bought this all-in-one PC that I'm on now. There was a Toshiba that cost $50 less, had 1GB more RAM, and was in a small tower. But I took PC World's "the best sub $750 PC" on the market's opinion, and this is what I ended up with. That Toshiba could have been built up a little at a time, as I could afford it, to twice it's OEM specs.
The only 2 things that I could upgrade on here was my RAM & HDD. I could have upgraded my CPU, according to my MOBO's home page specs, but thanks to HP's "no home user support", no tech could find me a high performance power adapter (a notebook type PSU). HP has many i5's, i7's and AMD quad notebooks with these power adapters, but no one could find me a compatible one. The thing was, I had found a new (OEM package) 2.4 dual core CPU, fully compatible with my MOBO for $34, but no one could help me with a simple PSU, which I was willing to pay for. So screw HP, they've lost another customer forever, and I told them so.
As far as Newegg's promos goes, I didn't know that those 8GB "Shell Shockers" were for the most part, outdated RAM. When I upgraded the RAM on this desktop, I used Crucial's automated process produce the best match for my PC, I felt that it was the best way to go (for me).
The notebook that I'm getting will have 6GB RAM, so I won't need to upgrade, especially since it has dedicated video graphics, that will leave my entire amount of RAM for my OS (as the article that I read stated). If I'm wrong about that, then I've been misinformed, and will learn as I go.
brkkab, I hope that everything works out well for you, and that you get things the way you want it someday.
Best of Luck,
Cat
