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Linux

I rang Acer support for my speakers last Wednesday. They said they would call back within four hours. I didn't receive the call. I thought they started working by themselves later that night, although it turned out to just be one of the speakers. And it stopped working again.

So I called up again, and I was transferred to the Out of Scope and Out of Warranty people and would need to pay for them to try to fix it. Even though I just bought it a month and a half ago. So I decided I'll install Windows 7 and call back! I first noticed the problem on my Windows 7 partition that I no longer have, by the way.
 
A change of plan! I rang up the manager of the store to complain about how although I had told the salesperson before buying it that I would be installing Linux, he sold me the extended warranty and did not say it would void the warranty. The manager told me that he had never heard of Linux voiding warranties.

The manager rang up a few minutes later and said that I could bring it in and they would restore it to factory settings (as I do not have the recovery partition) and I could pick it up the next day and Acer will cover me then.
 
@Alan. I know that PCWorld in the UK have not honoured warranties if you over write your hard drive with linux. Can you really expect to keep your warranty if you make data changes on your hard drive? :rolleyes:
 
AgeGap said:
@Alan. I know that PCWorld in the UK have not honoured warranties if you over write your hard drive with linux. Can you really expect to keep your warranty if you make data changes on your hard drive? :rolleyes:
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http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/119190
PC World, of the UK, denies reports that Linux voids warranties.

I had told the salesperson of my intentions and he did not say anything about warranties being voided. He sold me an extended warranty. I rang the manager and he said that it was the first he had heard of Linux voiding warranties.

The store respected the warranty.

Also:
Linux devotee Laura Breeden has discovered an obscure condition in the warranty supplied by Hewlett-Packard that lets them off the hook — even in the case of a purely mechanical defect — if the customer installs an operating system other than the one that comes pre-loaded. The condition is obscure because it’s not actually in the warranty.
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Read on, since I can't quote much more: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/03/run_linux_void_/
 
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In Australia, you can't "void" a warranty. There are statutory warranties which apply, and vendors can't impose conditions which affect those warranties. The contractual warranty simply doesn't matter, you just need to rely on the statutory warranty.
 
Lolly said:
In Australia, you can't "void" a warranty. There are statutory warranties which apply, and vendors can't impose conditions which affect those warranties. The contractual warranty simply doesn't matter, you just need to rely on the statutory warranty.
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I know about statutory rights regarding things needing to be fit for the purpose but I didn't know about how far reaching it was. I'll look into this more. :)

Thanks.
 
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Just found this thread. Awesome!

I generally stick to Debian-based distros. Mint on my desktop because sometimes I just want to get stuff done, Debian on my servers.
 
AgeGap recommends.......

1) Not shopping at PCWorld. Have a look in their end of line bins if you must.

2) http://www.dedoimedo.com/ This is a great blog full of linux stuff. Games, security, distros and other bits.
 
I didn't shop at PCWorld. I don't think they are even in this country. You were talking about PCWorld not honouring warranties when Linux is installed, and I found them apparently saying that's not true. I don't know if it's their current position, but if they change what they do over time then it's not deserving of a rolling eyes emoticon to not be aware of something.

I'm looking at that blog now. It looks good.
 
Here is my take on the PCWorld warranty thing.

Guy buys computer.
PCWorld also try to sell him anti virus, office software and an expensive extended warranty.
Installs linux.
Gets hardware fault.
Takes computer back to PCWorld.
Employee tells him due to installing linux the warranty is void.
Guy goes home and blogs.
PCWorld look bad and say it was a mistake.

The roll eyes was for the "Can you really expect to keep your warranty if you make data changes on your hard drive?" comment. It was my attempt at humour. Phail as they say on the internet.

The dedoimedo blog is very good. Much ripped off (scraped) though. I saw an article about Google Panda and dedoimedo was one of the genuine losers. Panda was to get rid of the content farms when returning search results.
 
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Alan said:
I rang Acer support for my speakers last Wednesday. They said they would call back within four hours.
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Funnily I took back an acer due to the speakers being a big dodgy. It was a replacement laptop and I broke my usual. Took me 4 days to actually get round to using the sound, was watching a film, realised the sound was a bit iffy, played about with the stereo settings and one speaker was duff. Took it back to the shop for a complete replacement after I securely removed all my data and the Linux partition.

Working fine now.
 
You say Linux and I say Linux,
You say Ubuntu and I say Ubuntu.
LaTex, LaTex, GNOME, GNOME,
Let's call the whole thing off!

I have just had an almost spiritual moment where I have changed my mind about pronunciation of, amongst other things, Linux. If you are explaining to someone what Linux is, you really don't want to get their backs up by correcting their pronunciation. Has anyone got a compelling reason to keep calling it Linux rather than Linux?

The UK Government has been making noise about moving to open source to save money. There is a very old joke about how to tell if a politician is lying. Read this, then either laugh or cry.
 
AgeGap said:
Read this, then either laugh or cry.
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The article gave no idea how they arrived that the average cost. I'm assuming the author simply took the £12.1 million the Cabinet Office spent on IT and divided it by 3300 computers(no telling where they got that number from). (I derived the 3300 computers by dividing 12,100,000 by 3,664.)

Here's news for you: people cost money. I'll bet a lot of that 12 million pounds went to paying their IT staff. And their software. And for their network infrastructure.

One source I read indicates the initial purchase price of a PC is only 10 to 15 percent of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). At the high end of that range, the $3,664 per PC IT cost indicates an initial purchase cost of £549. Not much, but over the expected three year lifespan of the machine that's still £1650.
 
Blue Mountain said:
Here's news for you: people cost money.
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Is there still slavery in Canada? You guys know how to keep a secret.

Several schools/colleges in the UK due to budget concerns have moved over to free/libre/open-source software. The government, while praising this, are using little imagination and carrying on regardless with their old habits.
The article states that “costs cover the core infrastructure and applications – basically anything supplied by a third party” and "Internal IT staff costs were not included in the figures".

The Home Office could have saved on software, and potentially, hardware. Though if we were to 'Get the Facts' we find support would cost gazillions more.

I rang the Home Office for information and they said that "Crysis looks great on a 32" monitor played with all settings high. Especially when the frame rate is over 100fps" or I may have just made that up.
 
AgeGap said:
@Alan. I know that PCWorld in the UK have not honoured warranties if you over write your hard drive with linux. Can you really expect to keep your warranty if you make data changes on your hard drive? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Of course you can. A different OS has no bearing on hardware issues. 2 separate things.

And as for "making data changes to your har drive", you do that every time you use the machine. Quit making excuses for them, you only look silly.
 
Xero said:
And as for "making data changes to your har drive", you do that every time you use the machine. Quit making excuses for them, you only look silly.
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I think that part was a joke. :)
 
Currently dual-booting Win 7 (for work) and Linux Mint 11 (was previously running 10 on my laptop and netbook). Win 7 is just there to keep me familiar, I'm never really fond of using it. I don't "dislike" windows, I just don't "like" using it. Using Mint, and add the standard Gnome top panel and menu back, and rearrange things to make it more "me". Easy to use, good assortment of apps, and plenty more easy to install. Had to install a couple apps on Win install the other week, and I swear i had to click Next about 6 times for each thing. I was beginning to get rather annoyed. So I booted back into Mint. Much more comfy. :)
 
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