[NTLUG:Discuss] Dell nightmare

[Wayne Dahl]

On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 09:24, jubal12 at juno.com wrote:
> How about this one?  Not as bad as Dell, but then I asked questions
> before I bought it.
> 
> I walked into a Gateway store about a month or so ago because I had heard
> that they would, like Burger King, build a desk top my way.  I was told
> in no uncertain terms that they WOULD put Windoze XP on it and I WOULD
> pay for it whether it was what I wanted or not.  Rather than let my blood
> pressure go up, since all it had cost me so far was a little time and
> gas, I just walked out of the store.  And I have no intentions of walking
> back in.
> 
> I did, however, find out that MicroCenter in Richardson did have some
> systems they would sell piecemeal without an OS.  This seemed like a good
> situation, and they were certainly in the running, but I wound up buying
> from IMS in Carrollton because they were a few dollars cheaper.  They
> wouldn't put Linux on it, but did sell it to me without an OS (and
> without charging me for one).  I am still happy with computer itself.  My
> current dissatisfaction is OS based, but I have to run Windoze because of
> my job.  To paraphrase an old country song, "I sold my soul to Linus, but
> Billy pays the bills."
> 

Hrm...has Gateway changed their policy?  It HAS been a long time (2 or 3
years, maybe more) since I went into a Gateway store and was told at
that time they'd install either Windoze or Red Hat for me on any
computer I bought.

What about service?  Of course, if they're going to install M$ and force
you to pay for it, then I would probably go with another vendor as
mentioned above and install my own or just build it from scratch.  But
if they can be talked into installing Linux, how is Gateway's service? 
Anyone have any experience with them?

The ONLY experience I've had with a service department centered around a
Compaq I bought almost 10 years ago.  It's the computer I now have
running Smoothwall on.  I had filled up the 740 Meg HD on it in about 6
months and needed to install a new drive.  I bought a 1.6 Gig WD and
could not get the second IDE controller to see it.  It could be seen as
a slave on the 1st IDE, but then the CD-ROM could not be seen if made
the master on the second IDE.  A call to Compaq, some troubleshooting
with a guy who actually knew what he was doing and it turned out the 2nd
IDE controller on that computer apparently had been bad out of the box,
even thought the bios saw it just fine.  He scheduled an in-home service
call and a guy came to my house about 2 or 3 days later with a new
motherboard, replaced the motherboard and tested to make sure everything
worked...at no cost to me since the computer was under warranty.  Compaq
even refunded the $35 service charge they required before I could even
talk to a live body.  Overall, it wasn't a bad experience (except being
forced to fork over $35 before being able to talk to someone).

Wayne