[Gllug] Linux invalidates your HP warranty

[Bernard Peek]

In message 
<264d99b00704031011m37581122qbdba71f641551ec8 at mail.gmail.com>, - Tethys 
<tethys at gmail.com> writes

>They can. As has been mentioned several times now, the obvious ways of
>doing that are to boot from a CD or from the network. Yes, running the
>restore CD would also work, but it would have the downside of
>overwriting the customer's data, which isn't a particularly good way
>to endear yourself to your customers.

There are good reasons to overwrite the customer data at the earliest 
possible stage. Firstly it removes any "personal data" which makes the 
handling of the machine dramatically easier. Without that HP would have 
to have much tighter control over who is allowed access to the boxes. 
Secondly it avoids the potential problem of finding smutty pictures on 
the disk, then having to decide whether to call in the police. That 
really annoys the customer.

 From a technical viewpoint they could probably do all of their 
diagnostics using a Knoppix boot disk with a few additions. But it's 
their company and I'm not going to tell them how to run it (or not for 
free anyway.)

>Yes, I agree with your point that HP see the product they're
>supporting as a hardware/software combination. Having their support
>department boot from a known good OS image is the best way to do so,
>and as I've pointed out, they can do this without touching the
>contents of the hard drive.
>
>Thus there is no valid reason for them to refuse support because Linux
>happens to be installed.

That's true. They could have handled it better. They should have just 
said that they were going to overwrite the disk if the box arrived back 
with Linux installed, and asked her whether she would prefer to ship it 
back without its disk.



-- 
Bernard Peek
bap at shrdlu.com

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