I learned something very interesting last night, on a local consumer
protection segment one of the TV channels has during the news:
In today's computer world, one out of five computers will have something
wrong with it when you buy it new!! That's 20% unreliability!! My 286
lived in 4 different places before it moved 'cross country to Ohio, and
nothing so much as came loose!!
Now consumers are having to be warned to follow certain steps if they
expect *any* type of warranty help on the brand new computer:
1. Keep the box & all the packing material
2. Do *NOT* mail in registration; do not register at ALL unless or
until you are absolutely certain that EVERYTHING is working
correctly!
3. Don't even think of so much as looking inside the case; they now
have tell-tales you will break, voiding all warranties.
All of the above means that any system I buy is either going to cost me
dearly, or be without warranty within a day after I get it. Why? For
one thing it has to have a NIC installed if I'm going to be able to use
it! So I would add, to the consumer public, the final warning note:
4. Buy only from a local authorized dealer which is also an authorized
service/repair/fix-it-up agent for the brand/make of computer you
are getting. Make certain they provide on-site warranty work, or
else determine precisely what their "return/repair/replace" rules
are and if it is possible to comply. If necessary, pay the b******s
to open the case and plug in that additional card you need, first
making certain *that* will be covered by a warranty also.
The only other option is to learn computers really REALLY well, and buy
barebones and personally build to desired specs.
l.d.
====
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 03:30:23 -0400 (EDT), Thomas Mueller wrote:
> Thanks to Roger Turk and Sam Ewalt for suggestions on buying additional RAM at a
> cheap price, but I'm inclined to think it not worth the trouble on this old
> computer, with hardware becoming gradually less dependable, and no non-DOS OS
> wanting to install. Linux boots but can't read my CD-ROM; NetBSD hangs on boot.
> OpenBSD boots but doesn't support my SCSI, so it can't read my CD-ROM.
> Conceivably I could copy Linux modules to a DOS partition and install from there
> in several stages, then try to debug the source code for 'mount' and the
> g_NCR5380 SCSI part.
-- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
