Well yesterday was the big day – got my desktop PC back from HP! 

Looks like they replaced my power supply and I should be back up and running as I was in a few days at most.  Going to take time to get things synced back over from my laptop to my desktop.  Overall I would say I was very impressed with how HP handled the situation.  A couple of days ago they even gave me a phone call to see how things were going and if I had gotten it back yet – that was nice.

On a side note, I can also report that Windows Vista’s image based backup service actually works! I made a backup of my PC before I sent it off and I am now back to how I was two weeks ago (even after a few reformats in between).  I am almost scared to praise them too much because then the wheels might fall off – but thus far that part of the experience has been the most surprising of all.