"Tony Duell" <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk> said:
> > Tandy & others did this as well... My CoCos always had one screw taped
over
> > with a tamper seal - if it was punched, they wouldn't warranty it.
Granted,
>
> Many of those Tandy seals could be peeled off in one piece and stuck back
> later :-).
Really? Without leaving a silver foil checkerboard pattern behind? Ugh, I
hate those stickers.
Example: 1995-made PSU. "Warranty void if removed" label. I peeled off said
label and it left behind a tinfoil checkerboard pattern. I ended up using a
hairdryer, then some isopropyl alcohol, then some meths and finally half a
can of Electrolube Fluxclene. It still wouldn't come off! I just poked my
screwdriver through it and proceeded to fix the fault.
> > it didn't take long for the 90-day warranties to expire, and when I was
> > more experienced with computers I knew I could fix anything necessary
> > inside one of my machines, so I didn't care... (just like my Tivo - The
> Me too..... I just ignore the seals and dive in.
"Warranty? What's that?"
> Mind you, I've seen PCs in the UK with warranty terms that include
> voiding said warranty if you install a different OS (or even a different
> version of the OS).
[!!!]
That's just plain dumb...
"Hello, Computer Shop, x speaking..."
"My machine just broke. Hard drive won't spin up. Serial number yyyy"
"What OS are you using?"
"Linux" [swap for Solaris/BSD/whatever to suit taste]
"Sorry, we don't support that operating system. I've just logged this call
and your warranty is now void. Have a nice day."
I don't know about you, but I'd be fuming...
> My guess is that this is really because the tech
> support idiots can't answer questions about real OSes. I also suspect
> that if, say, the hard drive had a headcrash 2 weeks after you'd bought
> the system and installed linux (or whatever), then they _would_ still
> have to replace the hard drive.
My trick for dealing with dead drives: RMA them. Maxtor seem to be pretty
good at RMAing - I Advance RMA'd my 5T040H4 (failing to spin up) and ended
up with a replacement on my doorstep within the week. I then tried to copy
the 'H4 to the new drive and the 'H4 died during the copy. I powered back up
and the new drive was full of garbage and the old drive was stone dead. No
motor, nothing. I did eventually get it to spin back up, but it was
completely trashed, too.
I also found out my off-site backup service had dumped part of my
incremental backup. Their excuse - "You were near your quota so we deleted
some old stuff for you". Had they told me before they nuked four months of
my data, I wouldn't have cared - I'd have just told my backup program
(in-house custom app - written with Delphi using the Zlib library for
compression) to rebuild the backup files. Instead, they destroyed four
months of irreplaceable e-mails. I promptly closed my account and added my
backup files to one of my website mirrors in a password-protected area. It's
mirrored on two other servers, plus it's also mirrored onto one of my local
fileservers, Defiant (spot the Star Trek references - my laptop has the
nickname "Voyager", the fileserver is "Defiant" and the net access machine
is "DeepSpaceNine"). Now that's what I call data security. Did I mention the
CDR recorder?
Later.
--
Phil.
philpem_at_dsl.pipex.com
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/
Received on Fri Jun 28 2002 - 14:24:54 BST