[NTLUG:Discuss] Dell nightmare

[fredjame]

Wayne Dahl wrote:

>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
>
I bought a Gateway laptop fairly recently (450SX4), and although they 
were willing to take it back if I couldn't get Linux running on it, they 
weren't interested in loading Linux or selling with MS.  Equus 
<http://www.equuscs.com/>, on the other hand seemed willing to work with 
me on it, but I went Gateway anyway, at the time.  My next might be an 
Equus, though.  By the way, and I am sure each person's situation is 
different, I work in a MS environment but only run Linux - maybe I get 
away with it because I am just a UNIX admin person, and not anyone 
"important to the operation" - who knows.  Anyway, I am really pretty 
happy with the Gateway, and very happy with Mandrake 9.1 and OpenOffice.

-- 
...your have to be the change...