On 14 May 2013 14:39, James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:

Not necessarily Linux related, but I just got off the phone with a certain large computer manufacture trying to resolve a failed harddisk on a 3 month old computer, and they claim that installing an alternate OS has voided the warranty. In this case the computer shipped with Win7 and the "alternate OS" was XP, but I find the claim ludicrous as I install Linux on all sorts of PC's and the warranty callcenter has never skipped a beat as long as I can demonstrate the fault in an obvious way. This particular computer is a different brand though...

To me it sounds like maybe the person you spoke to doesn't know what they are talking about, and probably can't tell the difference between software and hardware problems.

Well that's a given. The person wasn't even necessarily even _in_ Australia, definitely didn't sound like they were originally from Australia, and may not know any more about IT than how to pronounce a few of the terms that are in their script. And (sadly) I wouldn't really expect otherwise. If their script says "warranty void if customer has installed something other than the default shipped OS" then that's the problem I'm looking to solve.

Its fair enough if you replace Windows with another operating system you will no longer get warranty support on Windows any more. Or any issues you may have with your new OS.

Then again, I don't think I would get that support with Windows even if I left Windows installed :-(

Yep. I get that their diagnostic procedure is "wipe it all back to a known factory condition and if the problem still persists then, and only then, are we willing to discuss that the problem is hardware related" but that's the easy way out, is completely unhelpful to the customer, and I think they could do better. Other manufactures do do better. I've had one warranty procedure that went like "download this diagnostic tool onto USB, boot off it, then send up the results". That quite nicely removes any doubt over issues with the installed software, but it was for a server product and not a PC. James

General tips for getting warranties honored: - look at info on consumer affairs about the situation and know your rights - ask why they are refusing - if going to a physical store bring print outs of the relevant consumer affairs info I've never had a warranty honored straight away with no difficulties, but those approaches have got me through so far. They always find an excuse to refuse at first, probably assuming I don't know my rights and will just give up. Cheers, Bianca

On 14/05/2013 8:22 PM, Roger wrote:

My daughter had a warranty issue and was told by a sales person we knew that the stores who sell the laptops make very little on the transaction and if there is a warranty claim they have to foot the bill and may or may not get reimbursed by the supplier who may or may not and probably won't get reimbursed by the manufacturer.

This is true for many IT goods. I'm sure PC Range makes heaps of money per modem/router, but the retailer makes virtually nothing and if a warranty claim is required, then PC Range is "okay", but they don't cover everything properly, you (as the seller) still have to return it to them at your own cost -- so, yes, it means a loss immediately. :(

It's best in some ways to buy from the manufacturer if possible to reduce the number of hands along the way. With that in mind, Dell straight out flatly refuse to honor warranties if windows is removed and they will not install anything else.

Dell is actually selling XPS 13 Developer machines running Ubuntu these days, but there is no SKU available for purchase in AU at this time.... the device is supposed to be the same as the Windows build machine, but without the Windows license and I think it costs $50 more as well. Google project sputnik and you'll find Barton's blog posts. Cheers A.

On 27/05/2013 5:27 PM, Russell Coker wrote:

On Tue, 14 May 2013, Roger <arelem@bigpond.com> wrote: About 12 years ago IBM stopped selling Thinkpads with 1280*1024 screens, they went back to 1024*768 as the maximum resolution for just over a year. I presume that was because the yield on 1280*1024 screens wasn't high enough to support good profit margins at prices that customers were prepared to pay.

I get sick of seeing cheap laptops with 1366x768 screens, the minimum I want to see is FHD at 1920x1080 .... anything less, then I'm not interested, especially when the screen is 15.6" or larger. In years past, I used to get Dell laptops as the ONLY ones that readily had the best resolutions available. Today I see many 1920x1080 monitors (not attached to laptops) that are no good for other reasons -- poor viewing angles, poor brightness, not enough contrast. However, the mobile phone screens are way up there with the best, why can't we have decent screens on ALL laptops and 22-24" screens.... ? You often, get what you pay for though. Also today, you can get a Google Pixel Chromebook, but it's not widescreen (which is a real pity) and you can't run "proper" Linux or other OS on it easily; they make it painful. And Macbook Retinas don't "normally" operate at the full resolution, it's up to the apps to take advantage of the extra pixels (not that I bother with Mac OS X much). Cheers A.

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 09:16:00PM +1000, muzza wrote:

Screen Res has been a bug bear of mine too:. In the past yoiu could get decent res:- 1280x1024 or above and quite commonly 1600x1200 and at 2ms response times. However it seems that some idiot somewhere decided that we only watch videos on our computers so we only need 1920x1080 at 5ms response times,

it's not so much that 1920x1200 and other resolutions are over-priced, it's that 1920x1080 is dirt-cheap. the reason for that resolution is because that's what all the TV manufacturers made in mass quantities for 1080p "Full HD" televisions. different resolutions just aren't built in the same numbers, with the same economies of scale. they flooded the market and, as a result, screens of that resolution got a massive reduction in price that other resolutions didn't. 1080p is good enough for TV so we probably won't see significantly better resolutions cheaply until the TV watchers are convinced that 4K TVs are worthwhile. personally, i can't see the need for it for TV, but i'll be ready and waiting to buy when they get cheap enough - a nice small 24-32" 4K TV will make a very nice computer monitor. that won't be for several years, though. 2560x1440 (aka "1440p") will beat 2560x1600 for a similar reason - 16:9 is a wide-screen TV resolution, 16:10...but it won't be as cheap as 1080p because there's no reason at all for TV owners to upgrade to that - nothing is broadcast in that resolution....even most "HD" content is just upscaled SD, but it's hard to notice because most people watch TV from 10+ feet away. it's Apple iMacs and Dell workstations and the like driving the production of 1440p, a much smaller market than TVs - but users can watch full-screen videos on 16:9 without letterboxing and without weird scaling distortions...still, i'll probably replace my current 1920x1200 monitor with one when 24 or 27 inch 1440p monitors get down to $3-$400 - they're around $600-ish now. I'd prefer 2560x1600 because that extra vertical resolution is invaluable but i doubt i'll ever see that at an affordable price, apart from Apple's brief flirtation with that on 30" imacs, they're specialty-market items for medical devices (and anything medical is always ridiculously overpriced)

and for crappy lappies only 1366x768.

we're already starting to see laptops with better resolutions, 1080p and 1440p in 4-ish, 7, and 10 inch sizes- tablets (and even phones) are pushing that....but again, there's a bigger market for 7 and 10 inch tablets than there is for 11, 12, 14, etc inch laptops. small notebooks will benefit hugely from the mass-produced tablet screens. other sizes, not so much.

the point is why are they bringing out screens that even MS Windows doesnt support?.

windows, and linux, support such resolutions. but like web-developers, application developers test their software on their full-size desktop screens and if looks good there, it's good enough. so they make dialog boxes that don't fit in 1366x768 screens. most don't even think about the fact that it will look different, let alone crappy, on a different screen with a different resolution or size.

Its possible that the gamers that used to drive computer improvements have been undermined by the general dweeb population who dont know any better.

TVs are a much bigger market than enthusiast gamers

Its also possible that it is the thin end of the wedge encouraging us to move to tablets and phones with higher resolutions (if impossible to see the older you get)

no, it's just that mass-market things are cheaper than other things. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #24: network packets travelling uphill (use a carrier pigeon)

On Thu, 30 May 2013, Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:

2560x1440 (aka "1440p") will beat 2560x1600 for a similar reason - 16:9 is a wide-screen TV resolution, 16:10...but it won't be as cheap as 1080p because there's no reason at all for TV owners to upgrade to that - nothing is broadcast in that resolution....even most "HD" content is just upscaled SD, but it's hard to notice because most people watch TV from 10+ feet away.

Below is a message I sent to a SAGE-AU list last year about monitor resolutions. Ignoring the issue of manufacturing high resolution screens without too many dead pixels it seems that 20" is the maximum size for a high- DPI monitor with today's technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvi#Connector According to Wikipedia dual-link DVI is only capable of up to 2560*1600, so it won't drive anything much better than the monitors we have been discussing. This might be a contributing factor to a lack of higher resolution monitors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_port#Advantages_over_DVI.2C_VGA_and_LVD... Display Port can do "17.28 Gbit/s of effective video bandwidth, enough for four simultaneous 1080p60 displays (CEA-861 timings) or 2,560 × 1,600 × 30 bit @120 Hz (CVT-R timings)". Four simultaneous 1080p60 displays is less bandwidth than a single 27" display with "retina" quality DPI. There is apparently work in progress on TVs that have 4* the resolution of FullHD, so we will probably see monitors with 3840*2160 resolution soon enough which will use the full bandwidth of Display Port. Such a monitor with "retina" DPI would be 20". We need new cabling technology to have a "retina" DPI on a monitor larger than 20". -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On 29/05/13 21:16, muzza wrote:

In the past yoiu could get decent res:- 1280x1024 or above and quite commonly 1600x1200 and at 2ms response times. However it seems that some idiot somewhere decided that we only watch videos on our computers so we only need 1920x1080 at 5ms response times, and for crappy lappies only 1366x768.

27" Dell UltraSharp U2713H - 2560x1440 - $799 27" X-Star DP2710 (Samsung panel) - 2560x1440 - $295 There are options for higher-res screens; they've been around for a while too. They're just not as common.

On Wed, 29 May 2013, muzza <mjones11@tpg.com.au> wrote:

woefully pitiful especially considering that some MS Windows configuration windows often have the OK and cancel buttons below the bottom of the screen and you have to tab to them and hope you know which one you selected. This is even worse in linux for some reason. OK I digress - the point is why are they

Hold down the ALT key, then you can click the mouse anywhere in a Window to drag it around. This allows you to get access to the bottom of a window which is larger than the screen resolution. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

General tips for getting warranties honored:

- look at info on consumer affairs about the situation and know your rights

- ask why they are refusing

- if going to a physical store bring print outs of the relevant consumer affairs info

I've never had a warranty honored straight away with no difficulties, but those approaches have got me through so far. They always find an excuse to refuse at first, probably assuming I don't know my rights and will just give up.

I think it's actually illegal to offer an excuse that would deprive you of your statutory rights. I've been pleasantly surprised in the past, especially with phones that _aren't_ sold from Telstra Shops. I've known a few cases where someone has a phone that has a 12 month warranty but is still under the contract, and the person is only phoning up to ask about getting out of the contract or buying a new phone only to have the telco volunteer that the phone is effectively under warranty because it is still under contract, despite what any warranty that comes with the phone might say, and replace or repair it. The only downside to that is that the repair turnaround is generally weeks and they will often offer a temporary phone but it will be pretty crap, but it's still cheaper than a new phone. I bought a satnav device from DSE online a few years back, and when it arrived it was obviously a faulty return that had been resold... it was dirty, missing the charger, and didn't work. I called up and they said to take it into the nearest store for exchange. I did that and the store didn't have the same model but they did have a slightly better one for about $100 more, and when I asked if they could give me a bit of a discount they just did a straight exchange. A happy customer who might consider shopping there again (vs an unhappy customer who will readily complain to anyone who will listen) is worth at least that but most places just don't get it. James

Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:

The only requirement should be that the fault in question can be demonstrated. For a failed disk there shouldn't even be a requirement that it be installed in the computer, it's designed that disks can be replaced so you should be able to just bring it in.

Last time I got warranty on a server disk, the vendor (IBM, IIRC) accepted an email attachment of the smartctl -l selftest logs as sufficient (after escalating to second or third tier support, to get a tech who had actually heard of SMART).

If you go to Seagate warranty page it says to download this tool and attach the output with the drive return. At a guess the tool is windows only though.

If you were to swap the 5v/12v lines on the cable and plug into a power supply that can deliver sufficient current the drive would become "obviously failed" and smart output would become irrelevant... just sayin'.

Can testify to that, plugged the wrong PSU into an eSATA caddy last week, the SMART stops when the magic blue smoke escapes the logic board. Having said that if anyone has some dead WD HDDs, with working logic... Cheers, Chris

James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> writes:

If you go to Seagate warranty page it says to download this tool and attach the output with the drive return. At a guess the tool is windows only though.

Yeah IBM tried that too, and I just went "uh, this system is in production, and it's in another state. Taking it down to run your stupid script is Not Happening." Repeating that often enough did the trick. Don't remember if it was a Windows program of a linux-based live medium.

trentbuck@gmail.com (Trent W. Buck) writes:

...

James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> writes:

...

If you go to Seagate warranty page it says to download this tool and attach the output with the drive return. At a guess the tool is windows only though.

Yeah IBM tried that too, and I just went "uh, this system is in production, and it's in another state. Taking it down to run your stupid script is Not Happening." Repeating that often enough did the trick. Don't remember if it was a Windows program of a linux-based live medium.

PS: I tell a lie, it was HP. I remember now -- AFTER they agreed to replace the drive, they were obsessing about whether the drive bay's handle was blue or brown (we'd already told them the serial and so forth of the drive IN the bay).

Yep. I refuse to re-insert the disk if asked too. If the RAID controller determined that the disk is bad then I'm not taking any chances with it. James