[Gllug] Linux invalidates your HP warranty

[Bernard Peek]

In message <46128749.6010509 at tenshu.net>, Chris Jones <cmsj at tenshu.net> 
writes

>and I would imagine HP support (and indeed every other support
>department in the world, EVER) have no end of problems caused by
>installed software, but they can't really wiggle out of that one without
>a blanket policy to run the restore CD prior to doing anything.

HP seems to have cocked up their customer service here, possibly by not 
explaining what they wanted.

What they want is to be able to do some triage, a quick and dirty fix to 
most problems. The usual first step is to restore the machine back to 
its as-delivered state. They could do that by swapping in a new 
hard-disk, and if you take out the hard-disk before returning it then 
they will have to.

What they appear to have done is to ask the end-user to do this triage 
test, I suspect that re-imaging the disk clears up a significant 
proportion of all faults. Most users can't tell which faults are in 
hardware and which are in software. HP can't diagnose the user either, 
to tell whether they really do know what they are talking about.

I'm in two minds about whether it's reasonable to ask the end-user to do 
this testing or whether it's better to get the unit returned and do it 
as the first step of triage in the repair centre.

If you decide to do it in the workshop you get some additional problems. 
Firstly a significant number (I'm assuming) of machines get returned 
when the users could have fixed them themselves. More users have to 
spend more time without a machine. Every user has a slower turnaround 
for repairs. More machines getting shipped around means that the average 
cost of a repair goes up.

Overall I think it's best for HP to take the honest approach and simply 
tell all of the users that they must re-image and re-test before 
returning any machine because that's the only way that HP can remotely 
diagnose a hardware issue. For all I know that's what they did in this 
case, but reporting that would have ruined the effect of the article.



-- 
Bernard Peek
bap at shrdlu.com

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