[Dclug] Interesting Experience with Vista

[David Turvene]

On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 03:22 -0500, Jason wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 5 Nov 2007, Chuck Divine wrote:
> 
> > All,
> >
> > Back in September, after getting fed up with Dell's nonshipment of the
> > Ubuntu laptop I ordered from them, I went to Best Buy and picked up a
> > Compaq laptop at under $500.  It came with Windows Home Vista.  The
> > salesman in the store gave me no warning about what to expect.
> 
> Personally I've sworn off Compaq (and now HP) PCs forever.  The last few 
> I've dealt with including my parents' last three PCs, my wife's laptop, 
> etc have been absolute garbage and have broken (both the hardware and 
> software) almost immediately out of warranty.  My wife's 18-month old 
> laptop battery refused to hold any charge at all, for example.  Utter 
> crap.  Caveat Emptor
> 

Warranty?  Well, I bought an HP PC for my Dad with a 3yr warranty after
being a long time Dell customer.  But the HP Pavilion s3020n got good
reviews so what the heck.  When I went online to activate it, the
warranty code was rejected as "not valid".  I called HP support and kept
repeating the code I had received - making sure to be precise in all
alphas and nums.  I kept getting transferred until I was talking with
someone in the HP warranty validation service ombudsman group (or
something like that.)  The person said the code was not valid but
appeared to be what was sent to me when I bought the computer. Sooooooo,
he registered me for the three year extended warranty.  Wahoo!  Until
the following week when my Dad called with a technical problem and HP
support replied that they could not help him because he wasn't the
registered owner of the PC.  That makes sense and I should have thought
of that when purchasing the computer.  Sooooo, I got back on the phone
and did the tech support rep queuing sequence again.  Eventually the
warranty was transferred into his name and we all lived happily ever
after.

But, it all seemed so random and unorganized.  When does a company
provide invalid warranty codes?  Why doesn't a company have a clear
procedure for transferring ownership?  And you can't do any of this
using online chat or by email; you just have to take the Muzak over and
over (and over.)  HP/Compaq seems to still seems to be in startup mode
filling out it's support processes and staff so I'll stick with Dell for
a while.  I'll spend the hour to install Linux and eat the cost of the 
M$ license in return for not having to listen to the SAME FREAKIN'
MUZAK.  I'll bet HP has been ISO9000 certified for a decade.

Dave (but I'm not venting about this)