I am unsure where you stand regarding your claim but If I were you I would get XP on the laptop as offered by them.

The statement about it running out of support is slightly un-true. XP will not be avalible to system builds as of the end of this month but support for the operating system will continue until 2014.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/24/microsoft-promises-to-support-windows-xp-until-2014/

Your right regarding vista as it is a very demanding OS and needs at least 1.5Gb to run smoothly as it will us 700mb of memory doing nothing. Once the laptop has been put on XP you will notice it fly. If you know the rest of the spec of the old and new laptop I can let you know if it should be better than your last one or if they're given you a bag of spanners.

In regards to your lost data, I don't think NU or the assor can't be blamed for the portable Hard drive not working on your machine, and to be honest all important data on a laptop or desktop should be backed up on CD's or DVD's. All I can say is BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP, I am pretty sure you'll remember this from now as everyone losses important data at some point and learns from their mistake. If you need to get your data of your laptop the best bet is to get hold of a 2.5 inch hard drive caddy (shouldn't cost more than £10) and you put the broken laptop hard drive in the caddy. Take it to another computer and copy the important files from the harddrive to the spare pc. Put the laptop Hard drive back into the laptop and then send it off.

Then get NU to put XP onto the other laptop and get them to upgrade the RAM as promised, then get your old files of the other machine and copy them to your new laptop. I would avoid a cash settlement as they will give you what the laptop is worth now not what you paid for it.

I have a story that is very similar to another person on the site regarding the new for old replacement of a laptop; however ours has a twist.

A few weeks ago I dropped my laptop, which resulted in it being damaged beyond repair. The resulting process of sorting out the claim has been painful to say the least. We are insured with Norwich Union and have suffered a similar situation on two other occasions.

We have had to chase up NU and their assessor Ival to try to reach a resolution, unfortunately to no avail as yet. Our laptop, when purchased was as with the other post a fairly high spec machine with a top end processor. Now I take on board the comments in that post regarding improvements in technology etc. The problem with this claim is that firstly neither NU nor Ival said I would have to pay to have my own laptop returned so that I could retrieve the data from the hard-drive. Both NU and Ival eventually admitted they should have informed me of this and offered to retrieve the data for my, but only after I insited and they then had to check the phpne calls, that at no point had this issue been mentioned during this claim. I said I would prefer to do this myself, so that if I messed up then only I was to blame. A portable hard-disk disk arrived a day later that was not readable on my computer – several call to NU and Ival finally resulted in NU agreeing to send out another disk as that one was faulty and arived without a CD that contained the relevent drivers for the hard-drive. Two weeks later and still no disk.

Also I have rejected the laptop that NU have offered as it not only has a base level processor but its performance is terrible, both in terms of processor speed and battery life. This I have eventually found is down to Windows Vista. I mentioned this to NU and Ival (always have to make several calls) To which they responded by saying they know that Vista takes a lot of memory so they 'kindly' upgraded the laptop by putting in more RAM. This turned out to be a complete lie as the laptop as standard comes with 1 Gb or RAM – just what the one they gave me come with. They admited that the laptop had not actually been upgraded. Eventually after numerous phone calls to both NU and Ival they admitted that Vista is not a very good operating system and is riddled with numerous problems and compatibility issues. This in turn is why the laptop has to run at its full power setting when on batteries hence why the battery life is so poor, even then it is still slower than my 5-year-old laptop. As such I have rejected the laptop as I do not consider a computer with an operating system that has problems that prevent other programs that I use from working correctly that worked perfecrly well before, thus causing the whole laptop to run slow to be a new for old replacement. They even said they would retro-load windows XP onto the laptop, I rejected this as XP will no longer be supported by Microsoft as of this month. At one point NU even told me to go out and find what I considered to be a suitable laptop and that they would cover the cost (within reason), they have since changed their mind on that. I have tried numerous programs that I use and several have compatibility issues with Vista that would require the purchase of a new program and at up to £800 for some of them that’s a lot of money. This is why I am switching my home PC to an Apple Mac, as they seem to suffer far less with such things.

NU have since taken 10 working days to provide and answer which to be honest I find an insult considering everything I have had to do to try to resolve this claim. They have now said that the old laptop hard drive is not recoverable, which I find hard to believe as I managed to recover a few files before it was sent to Ival to be assessed and it was packaged in a secure and padded transit box. They are still not giving back the old laptop for me to try for myself. As for the replacement they have said they will now consider a cash settlement, which I know will be far short of the £1500 we originally paid and have found this to be in the region of £350-£400, though I take on board the improvements in technology, but not when it comes with a slow, complicated and problem riddled OS, backed up by agreement from the insurance company, one that have lied to a customer on several occasions, all recorded on tape for 'Training Purposes'

My question where do I know stand with regard to this claim.