Not much difference between the two. 
Well let’s start with the dead pixel, the laptop that I sent away for repair finally came back after some angry phone calls to Comet and lots of stories to tell me what was actually happening. So I went to the store and picked it up, a quick glance at the job report told me that the screen and casing had been replaced as both had been damaged when I stood on it.
I booted up the laptop and noticed my wallpaper had changed from the OS X globe which has a black background to the palm tree wallpaper in Vista, I didn’t think much of this until I got home and opened up a Firefox window and loaded a webpage with a black background and a big stuck green pixel jumped out at me. It then clicked this was the reason that Comet’s service centre had changed my wallpaper, what a sneaky bunch! 
The speaker bar which contains the buttons such as the power and media controls on the top of the looked like it had not been screwed back done and after a couple of uses the actual bar popped off, luckily it kind of clipped back on but there was still a gap in the casing, I could probably fix it by taking the computer to bits and finding the screws that actually keep the thing down but I would end up either breaking it further or something else all together.
This was the final straw and I decided to go back to Comet, unfortunately I was working the weekend and didn’t manage to get it back to Tuesday. I explained what was up and said it was shocking customer service and I actually wanted something done about it. The girl in the Comet store was very helpful and had a look at the laptop and agreed that it shouldn’t have been returned like that, she went and spoke to the duty manager which unfortunately in this store is completely useless and I knew that any kind of communication with him would be wasting both our times. The girl came back and apologised but said the laptop would have to go back to the service centre for the second time in a month. I knew this would happen so agreed and she quickly booked it in and gave me the slip showing what she had written, she explained the screen did not have any dead pixels when brought into the store so should not leave with one and also that the speaker bar had not been secured properly so was now damaged, the slip also estimated that the laptop would be back from repair on the 11th of August but that remains to be seen although I highly doubt it.
So just need to wait until it comes back from the service centre and pray to god there is not a round three but I highly suspect that their will be.
As for the spam part, it’s quite simple and can be kept short, due to constant abuse (about 200 a day) user sign up abuse I have disabled registration for the blog, don’t worry if you had an account, this is still active but no new members will be able to join, it’s not really needed anyway, as it’s only me that posts, comments are allowed without accounts and are already adequately spam protected plus I don’t restrict any part of the website to certain groups or what have you, so really you shouldn’t notice any difference except no more pesky “CheapViagra12333 has registered for your blog” emails for me which will make a nice change after months of manually chasing these pesky things down and deleting them, it’s pointless for them to sign up anyway as they still have to bypass the same spam protection as if they were guests.
So as usual feel free to contact me if the new changes cause you any problems and I will see what I can do, i have been known to be quite flexible so don’t hesitate in asking! 
