On Saturday 23 July 2011 18:35:20 Mick did opine thusly: > On Saturday 23 Jul 2011 17:49:53 Neil Bothwick wrote: > > On Sat, 23 Jul 2011 10:55:11 -0400, Mike Edenfield wrote: > > > I'm actually speaking from experience here: the first thing > > > I did on my Inspiron was wipe the HD and install Gentoo, > > > only to learn that the wireless card was faulty. And since I > > > could not run the standard Windows diagnostics they couldn't > > > (wouldn't?) help me. > > > > > > So I booted the restore CD, put Windows back, and got a new > > > NIC within about a week. > > > > What would you have done if the hard drive had failed? > > > > I always image the windows disk and then wipe it, but I'm aware > > that this is not completely reliable. some failures make > > restoration impossible. > > Yes, that's why I usually install Gentoo as a dual boot on a new > machine. > > On the other hand, if the drive is dead what is Dell/HP/etc going to > do? Take it apart and run forensics on the platters?
They tried that with us once. But only once. They got a response something like "We buy in excess of 5,000 servers from you per year. Are you really going to quibble about one measly notebook drive?" In Dell's defense, I honestly think the rep on the phone was new and recently headhunted away from HP. He hadn't yet been grooved into how stuff really works. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
