> > So I'm skimming through a slashdot discussion of Nvidia's > > quality problems (my Schadenfreude was hungry), and found: > > > >> Did you buy a card with a lifetime warranty? Both EVGA [evga.com] > >> and XFX [xfxforce.com] offer lifetime warranties on 8800GTs. > >> Personally, I won't buy RAM or video cards from a company that > >> doesn't offer a lifetime warranty, as there are more than > >> enough manufacturers for both products offering these warranties. > > > > If the premium/standard/economy card idea is still alive, the > > premium card could have a lifetime warranty, standard 2 years, > > economy 6 months. > > > > And/or offer an extended warranty for extra money. > > This is a good idea. We could offer a much extended warranty for the > $1500 price point. But we'd have to place a limit for modified > boards. Since we want to encourage modifying them, we want to > warranty even boards that have been hacked, but at that point, it > becomes increasingly difficult to figure out who's to blame if it > breaks.
Off the top of my head, the main risk of end-user modification is probably damage to the circuit board from soldering. This should be visible and obvious (e.g. lifted pad). This is a risk even with experienced full time professional board repair techs. Connectors are your friend. Perhaps if they solder a wire directly to a semiconductor device they could overheat the device. Things like over-Voltage and over-current could happen with or without modification. Same for ESD damage. It could be useful to have a diagnostic program that exercises everything on the board, and have the warranty be that the board will run the program. It could be useful to have a policy for what happens if the customer modifies the board in a way that it no longer functions as originally designed. (e.g. cuts a trace) ----- A related problem is people that buy things to play with for a few days, then expect to return it and get a refund. Some places are honest and sell these as "open box", others call them "refurbished" (yeah right), and others pretend they are still new. I suggest either not offering refunds, or charging a "restocking fee", say 30%, and then offering the "open box" units for 20% off. The 10% difference covers the cost of testing. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
