If a device witnessed your bereavements and the outbreak of the Covid Pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, you will be more than attached to it.

By profession I am a secondary school teacher in China. Like my peers in other countries, I do not earn 6- or 7-digit monthly salaries. Teaching guarantees a good lifestyle, though. I love it.

Back in 2015 I made a small fortune online. With growing digital skills, I set my eyes on getting a more efficient PC, with which I planned to continue learning to create digitally. I thought I deserved a premium machine. I am not a gamer. My interests are DTP and language learning.

After doing some research online, I found myself mesmerised by Razer. At the time Razer Blade 2016 i7 6700 seemed to be the most powerful laptop on the market. Though it was a refurbished machine, there were a lot of positive reviews of the device. Of course I read some negative comments about it too. One thing that struck me about the company was that the CEO is a Singaporean Chinese.

After much deliberation I made the decision to get the device. The day I received the package was March 18, 2017. Opening the box, I was greeted by the most beautiful laptop I had ever seen.

The following months the device worked perfectly. With a faster processor, it more than met my need to learn to create audio and video. Yes, the fans were loud, but I did not mind that as long as they were running smoothly. The adorable laptop witnessed the steady growth of my digital abilities.

One day in August 2017, I was working on the laptop doing a big project with Adobe apps when a call came in. It was from my younger brother. He told me that my mother, who had been suffering from depression for years, had attempted suicide by overdosing on the pills she took regularly for the condition. We got Mother rushed to hospital right away. With medical help, she lucked it out.

On the afternoon of April 21, 2018, I was finalising a test paper for my students on the device. It worked like charm. That evening, at home I tried to boot the PC but it failed to start. The system stuck at the Razer logo and refused to load Windows. In the following days I tried time and again to boot the PC, in various ways, but all the efforts were in vain.

Browsing through Razer Insider, I found that other users shared the same problem. One of the solutions was to ask Razer Support for a USB stick to reinstall Windows. So I followed suit.

I contacted Razer support on WeChat. The worker I reached was polite and courteous. Upon learning about my problem, she suggested that I send the device by fast delivery to their support centre in Shanghai. I had never had such an experience before. Would the machine be damaged on the way to and from the Service Centre? I had doubts. Besides I thought it was Windows at fault. I insisted on getting a system backup USB. She agreed.

About a week later, the USB arrived from their support centre in Shenzhen. To my chagrin, the USB did not work. Whatever I did the system stuck stubbornly at the Razer logo, with a circle rotating forever on the screen.

Meanwhile I switched to my backup laptop, a ThinkPad, for everyday work. It was terribly slow but incredibly stable. Windows 10 occasionally suffered some hiccups but on the whole it was as stable as a faithful mule.

On the morning of May 29, 2018, a call came from Uncle. He said that my mother had attempted suicide. It was her second try, and this time she made it. Her death devastated the entire family. Having been beset by depression for years, Mother might have thought that going away from us that way was the best option for her.

When the new term began, my students entered the last year of high school. I had to depend on my ThinkPad for work and my language learning efforts. The machine was as painfully slow as a snail but it supported me through the months when my Razer was down.

In early October, 2018, I decided to contact Razer Support again. Still the receptionist was very polite and courteous. I was referred to a Razer worker in charge of laptop repairs. After submitting the purchase receipt and papers, I was told to send the device to their support centre in Shanghai. The main components of the machine were still under the 2-year guarantee. It had not expired by then.

About three days after the device was dispatched, a call came from Razer Support Centre Shanghai. The worker told me that the machine had been fixed. According to him, the motherboard had been out of order. It was replaced costing me nothing.

Within a couple of days, my Razer Blade was back. With a push of the power button, the system was booted. Better still all my files on the PC remained intact. For months after that the laptop ran perfectly without any glitch.

In the winter of 2019-2020, word came that a mysterious SARS-like syndrome was detected in Wuhan, my provincial capital. At the time the last batch of Chinese teens I had taught were wrapping up their first term of uni in different parts of China, and I was teaching a new batch of teens from Grade 1 high school. By the time the Spring Festival 2020 holiday came to an end, the virus had brought virtually the entire nation to a standstill. It was the first ever in the country’s history. When it was time for the new term to start around the beginning of February, 2020, school switched to the online mode. I taught lessons on my Razer Blade from February until mid-June 2020. The beast ran well without any complaint.

In the summer of 2021, the touchpad bulged. I suspected the battery had bloated. Opening the chassis, I found the battery had indeed grown so out of proportion that the touchpad was pushed up. I had the battery removed. After that the device ran on DC like a desktop. It performed very well otherwise.

In the spring of 2022, the right fan started to make weird noises when the CPU or the memory was under stress. I still liked my Razer Blade very much when the fans were functioning normally. With summer on the way, I worried that the fans would cause more trouble. Then I decided to contact Razer Support, this time through their online service.

The communication between us was prompt and very polite. It was arranged that the laptop be sent to their service centre in Shanghai. At the time, the Covid problem in that metropolis was said to be worsening. But the government reiterated that a lockdown of the entire town would be out of the question considering the role the metropolis plays in China’s economy and the world economy at large. Still in doubt, I called Razer Support Centre personally. A worker there confirmed that their service was not affected in any way by Covid.

With the confirmation I sent my device to Razer Service Centre. Three days later, I got their reply notifying me that both the fans and the battery would be replaced. I was instructed to make the payment, and I did.

Had everything been running normally, I would have received my repaired device within days. Then out of the blue on the night of March 27 Sunday the Shanghai municipal government announced that the entire town would undergo Covid testing in two stages. It did not say it was a lockdown, but the following days showed that it was a de facto lockdown anyway. All normal business had to cease.

On Monday morning March 28, a worker from Razer Support Centre called me explaining about the inevitable delay in sending back my device. I fully understood the situation and accepted it.

Then weirdly, on Tuesday morning March 29 I was working in the office when my brother messaged me on WeChat. I was told that my aunt, my mother’s younger sister, had died of brain haemorrhage at home that morning. It was such a bolt from the blue that it was hard to swallow it.

My aunt’s funeral took place two days later back in our home village. All the time, my Razer Blade was on my mind. I closely followed the Covid development in Shanghai, which seemed to be deteriorating day by day.

On the morning of March 8, a call from Razer Support reached me. The worker explained that they had got instructions from their headquarters to send a backup PC to me from another location in China. I declined it, because I have backup machines to work on this time.

It is April 4 this moment. I am writing this blog entry on one of my backup PCs with my Razer Blade stranded temporarily in Shanghai. This time I do not feel like being left out on a limb. Instead I can rest assured that my Razer Blade, properly serviced, is ready to come back as soon as the lockdown on Shanghai is lifted.

Was it pure coincidence that my Razer device witnessed my two bereavements? Was it pure coincidence as well that when each bereavement happened, the machine was down? Not a superstitious guy, still I am awed by the order things turned out around my Razer Blade.

My personal experiences over the past five years or so have shown that Razer Customer Service is fast, polite and professional. I did not feel any inadequacy and inappropriateness in their handling of my cases. I like my Razer Blade because it is really aesthetically satisfying and because I am a Windows loyalist. Yes, there are still issues with Razer laptops. The fans are loud and the batteries tend to bulge but the problems can be sorted out if you contact Razer Service. I believe that someday Razer laptops can be rid of their present weaknesses. If so, a hefty price tag will not turn away those who love beautiful sturdy Windows machines.