HP & Compaq

From: Glen Goodwin <acme_ent_at_bellsouth.net>
Date: Thu Sep 6 21:05:55 2001

> From: Russ Blakeman <rhblakeman_at_kih.net>

> 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 was specifically referring to the Pavilions. The Vectras were especially
well-made.

> I only get one of every 50 or 60
> owners that have the Compaq owner's attitude about HP's machines.

Not too sure what you're saying here.

> 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.

Problem is the customers often won't wait. We're famous for <=
2-day-turnaround ;>)
 
> 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.

Yeah, their P-II boxes were *almost* standard ATX.

> 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.

I never download any MS stuff.

I'm referring to the device drivers for goodies like the Riptide
sound/modem combo. The drivers posted at hp.com are > 9MB. The *real* fun
begins when, after the download, the installation program pukes up a
message: "Cannot find original driver files -- update terminated" or
something to that effect. Why aren't the originals available on their
site??? And what sort of code, exactly, is in a > 14 MB video driver???

When I was writing C for a living, if I had ever produced an executable --
never mind a device driver -- which occupied 14 MB of disk space I would
have been sent packing. Sheesh.

Glen
0/0
Received on Thu Sep 06 2001 - 21:05:55 BST