Hi, Gee, the list is slow to pass on the messages.... !!!!!! I've been waiting to reply to the list copy of James' message on list. On 11/02/2012 3:57 PM, James Harper wrote:
On the subject of warranty, the laws in australia have changed for goods purchased since 1/1/2011. The manufactures warranty just represents the point where you can get your money back easily. The product must still function for a reasonable time after purchase and must be repaired or replaced if it fails within that time, although I think that responsibility falls to the party you purchased it off. The "reasonable time" bit isn't clearly defined, but if I bought a disk and it failed within 18 months I'd be contacting the place I'd bought it off, even if it only came with a 12 month warranty. No manufacturer is going to agree that their product isn't expected to last 3 years.
From http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1023610
I believe that the laws have NOT changed, those laws were part of the Trade Practices Act quite some time ago..... the new ACCC notes / rulings makes people _think_ that the laws have changed. All of this was already covered by TPA. The trouble with many things is that they are made to be replaced, and far too frequently as well. Some things last, others do not. We all know that with HDDs there are all sorts of things that can go wrong and some of those are problems due to manufacturing faults, others are to do with the environment in which they are used and HOW they are used. If you look at the MTBF [1] figures of "standard" drives against "enterprise" drives, you will see that standard drives are manufactured to lesser standards and expecting them to last as long as enterprise drives is just a dream. Consumer drives (standard ones) are not expected to operate 24/7, but you will certainly expect that with an enterprise drive. Standard drives might not be operated in ideal conditions, but there is a fair expectation that enterprise drives which are required to operate 24/7 should be doing so in a suitable environment... Anyway, the main points are: 1. Warranty doesn't necessarily dictate reasonable "life"; 2. Longer warranties indicate better specified equipment; [which will presumably have a longer real serviceable life] 3. The ACCC points are questionable and completely unnecessary in the whole scheme of things, the TP Act protects us from reasonable life of goods in service. 4. If you want a drive to last, choose an enterprise one and treat it nice by operating it in a suitable environment. If it fails before a "reasonable" lifetime and you have done the right thing, then the drive will most likely fail during the actual warranty period and anything the ACCC or the TP Act says won't matter. If it fails after the end of the warranty period, then simply buy a new one and be done with it. Also, many commercial organizations will religiously replace older hardware at or before warranty expiration; with computers, this can be an advantage for all sorts of reasons -- including that tech has improved significantly and quite often the price has come down or the speed / capacity and overall performance has significantly been improved upon. Using old drives until they fail is more likely to cause more grief than it is worth; of course, having suitable backups and RAID implementation lessens the risk somewhat but you don't benefit from the improved newer tech. btw it completely astounds me when so much equipment is sold "cheap" from places like zazz.com.au and ozstock.com.au with LIMITED 3 month warranties..... if it is new equipment being sold in AU, then you are entitled to at least 12 months statutory warranty -- why are there exceptions? Why are batteries for mobiles and laptops only warranted for 6 months? Old stock that is sold at greatly reduced pricing (which reflects the fact that it is old equipment already) should be exempt from the standard statutory 12 month requirement, but I don't think it is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures -- Kind Regards AndrewM Andrew McGlashan Broadband Solutions now including VoIP Current Land Line No: 03 9012 2102 Mobile: 04 2574 1827 Fax: 03 9012 2178 National No: 1300 85 3804 Affinity Vision Australia Pty Ltd http://www.affinityvision.com.au http://adsl2choice.net.au In Case of Emergency -- http://www.affinityvision.com.au/ice.html