HP & Compaq

From: Russ Blakeman <rhblakeman_at_kih.net>
Date: Thu Sep 6 00:17:45 2001

I never have a problem with the business line of HP PCs' (Kayak, Brio and
Vectra) - the Pavilion line keeps me going with warranty repairs at $65 per
inshop repair and $30 per "exchange unit". I only get one of every 50 or 60
owners that have the Compaq owner's attitude about HP's machines. I
personally wouldn't buy one due to the proprietary nature of the mainboards,
cases, power supplies and other hardware. I can get ATX 250 watt clone power
supplies all day at $25 each but certain Pavillion supplies can cost up to
$100 each.

If you contact customer support at HP they can either ship a free restore
set if it's under warranty and you tell them it's there but not loading. If
you've lost it, in or out of warranty, they can sell you a replacemant if
you supply the unit serial number.

Packard Bell wasn't bad near the end of their reign of terror. They got real
too late and were already on a downward spiral fast towards earth.

I don't know why anyone feels the HP restore is bloated...it's all
MicroSteal for the most part. All windows 98, NT, ME and 2k stuff is huge
and you need a broadband connection to download it. I just popped $20 for
the Win NT 4.0 service pack 6.0a rather than sit for 2 days downloading it.

-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
-> [mailto:owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Glen Goodwin
-> Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 10:34 PM
-> To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
-> Subject: Re: HP & Compaq
->
->
-> > From: Russ Blakeman <rhblakeman_at_kih.net>
->
-> > I wonder if HP will absorb Compaq and totally do away with
-> them or still
-> run
-> > them as an independantly named subsidiary.
->
-> PC-wise, I hope they just sort of do away with each other. IMHO, the
-> current HP and Compaq lines represent the lowest point in mass-produced
-> boxes. As bad as E-Machines and Packard Bells. Additionally, obtaining
-> the drivers (when the customer has lost the restore disk) can be
-> impossible, and when it *is* possible I'm often looking at a 15
-> MB download
-> for the video and 11 MB more for sound.
->
-> This is grotesque -- crappy, proprietary hardware running
-> bloated software.
-> It's a wonder people put up with it. Perhaps they won't anymore.
->
-> Glen
-> 0/0
->
->
Received on Thu Sep 06 2001 - 00:17:45 BST