On Wed, 2002-05-15 at 11:09, Ryland Bingham wrote:
> The cpu fan on my 3 month-old HP pavilon just died a noisey death. I
> called HP for a replacement as the system was still under warranty. They
> said I'ld have to ship the entire system back to them for repair. They
> don't think that the average user can replace a cpu fan. It was going
> to take 2-3 weeks to get the system back. Towards the end of the call I
> let it slip that I removed Win ME and was running linux, and the support
> person casually mentioned that part of the repair process was to wipe
> out linux and re-install Windows me. She said that without the original
> operating system, the tech would not be able to QC the system before
> sending it back to me.
>
> In effect, if you don't want to have your system wiped and unavailable
> for 3 weeks, you lose your Warranty. I went out and spent $15 for a new
> fan, but what do I do if something major dies on me?
Bring it to a SLUG meeting ;)
Seriously though, it's generally better for a residential machine to fix
the problem yourself or with the help of family and friends (what about
that 12 year old geeky nephew, eh? ;)
Laptops, on the other hand, are different altogether. There's generally
not much you can do to fix them when they break. Last week I went
through the disgrace of shipping back a customer's IBM laptop (sans
harddrive, of course) with the same threat you faced. Without the
harddrive handy, they merely swapped the systemboard and declared it
"fixed" (which it really wasn't, sadly). Granted this did only take 5
days from the time it was shipped until the time it returned.
Isn't it HPQ now? They're not HP, and they're not Compaq... they're that
new hybrid company. Your guess is as good as mine.
- Ian C. Blenke <icblenke@nks.net> <ian@blenke.com>
http://ian.blenke.com
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