[lug] The tide's turning perhaps... :-)

[Michael Deck]

At 02:05 PM 9/29/2002, you wrote:
>"D. Stimits" wrote:
>
>> Many places won't honor their warranty if the o/s is not installed from
>> their disks. Of course the owner could probably re-install windows from
>> the store disks if returning it. It is funny that many of these
>> retailers will not even honor the warranty if another version of windows
>> is installed...even the same type of windows installed from a CD not of
>> their own can remove all service aid in the warranty.
>>
>> D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi.com
>>
>
>So if I were to buy a new laptop, it would be useless to buy the extended
>warrenty if I were planning to install Linux as soon as I got it?

Might be. I bought a Dell Inspiron 4000 while Dell was still a somewhat Linux-friendly company. It came with Win2k which I used for a while. Then I reformatted and put KRUD on it. About 2 weeks ago I started having problems with the DVD-ROM drive. When I called support, they wouldn't even talk to me about the problem unless it was reproducible under Windows (on the theory that it might be a software problem). So I had to put Win2k on the machine (dual boot) in order to show them it wasn't a software problem with Linux. Annoying. However, having done that I was able to get warranty service which might some day solve the problem. 

-M



Michael Deck
Cleanroom Software Engineering, Inc.