laptop with international warranty & support

Thu Sep 25 14:28:40 UTC 2003

On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 10:04:48AM -0400, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> Such a machine would come in handy on those freezing mornings when the car 
> seems to take forever to warm up:) Seriously, I know the major brands also 
> make compromises. All the major brands also have models that are typically 
> sold in the retail channel and for the most part, target consumers and 
> small business owners. I do not buy or sell consumer models of the brands I 
> mentioned earlier. The typical warranty on such machines is one year as 
> opposed to the "corporate" models which are usually three years. Warranties 
> on laptops are worth real money. Virtually everything but the disk drive 
> and RAM are proprietary and expensive so I would rather have the peace of 
> mind of three years of coverage than not.

I remember trying to instlal directx on a win95 equiped compaq armada
back in 97 I think, and it was imposible to do at that time.  Too bad
given the presentation software the user was supposed to use on it
needed directdraw.  Compaq at the time said they hadn't written directx
drivers for the business laptops, since directx was "only for games".
Other than that I liked compaq's business models.  Their consumer
models are not usualy nice at all.

> E-machines has only popped up recently in the retail chain. There is an 
> after market for IBM, Compaq, HP and parts and service for them are not 
> difficult to obtain. Who knows what E-machines laptops will be like? If we 
> can use their desktop machines as a point of reference, they will 
> essentially be disposable machines.

Yeah, I remember the emachines desktops.  Supposedly the company has
gone through a major overhaul a couple of years ago, and is pretty good
now.  Time will tell of course.

> I avoided Toshiba for the longest time because even on their "corporate" 
> models, they only offered a measly one year warranty while their 
> competitors were offering three. I think they offer three now but I do not 
> see them as a compelling choice when I have had good results with IBM, HP, 
> Compaq. Of the three, IBM stands out for the best web site. If I have a 
> model number for an IBM machine, I can find out just about everything about 
> it on the IBM web site. HP's web site leaves much to be desired. As for 
> Panasonic, I have only ever seen them at trade shows. I have never actually 
> seen anyone using one. My impression was that they were built like brick 
> outhouses but horribly overpriced. What is it about Toshiba and Panasonic 
> you do not like? Anecdotal evidence is often the only thing we have to go 
> by in this business.

I spent many hours fighting with a panasonic some years ago to get the
drivers for the pcmcia slots to co exist with the other devices in the
machine.  After reading all the docs, trying the various drivers and
setup utilities and trying to configure everything by hand, I determined
it was imposible to make that laptop have al it's components available
at the same time.  The toshiba's seem to have a few proprietary bits in
them, or at least things that are not completely standard, given how
many places in the linux kernel I see options for dealing with toshiba
oddities.  At least I can just install stuff on an IBM and expect it to
work (well assuming X has support for the video chip yet, in case of
newer models).  IBM's web site certainly is one of the best around.

> Speaking of service, a friend bought one of the 17" PowerBooks a couple of 
> months ago. It has a gorgeous display but I hate the keyboard, track pad, 
> and Apple's dogmatic adherence to its inane policy of how a single mouse 
> button is less confusing then three. Nonetheless, it is a nice machine. He 
> was using it when OS X put up an unusual error message the details of which 
> are not important. He shut the machine down and tried to restart but got 
> whatever the equivalent of the sad Mac is these days. He took the machine 
> in to the *authorized* Apple dealer that he bought it from and was told 
> that it would be eight(!) days before they could even touch it. He was not 
> happy with that answer so he contacted the owner of the dealership who 
> moved him up in the queue so that it took "only" two days before the techs 
> looked at his machine. They called my friend and told him that the service 
> call could not be covered under warranty because the machine had been 
> infected by viruses and there was no warranty coverage for those sorts of 
> things. The conversation went something like this.
> 
> My friend: "Which anti virus software are you using?"
> 
> Tech: "Norton. We have already formatted the drive and are going to do a 
> fresh install of OS X to revive your machine."
> 
> My friend: "What were the viruses that you found?"
> 
> Tech: ... rattled off a bunch of .exe, .pif, and .scr files from the Eudora 
> attachments folder.
> 
> My friend: "Those are Windows viruses! They do not have any effect on OS X!"
> 
> Tech: "All I'm telling you is that Norton found viruses that you may not 
> know about."
> 
> My friend: "Why is it that Symantec's web site does not have any viruses 
> that affect OS X if these viruses that you found supposedly caused this 
> problem?"
> 
> Tech: ... adamant that it was all the "viruses" that was the cause of the 
> problems with the machine.
> 
> Long story short, after doing a fresh install of OS X, predictably, the 
> machine was no better off. This time, they concluded that the logic board 
> (motherboard) was defective and had to be replaced but they still would not 
> concede that the Windows viruses that they found had nothing to do with the 
> problem. They kept insisting that it was a combination of the viruses and 
> defective logic board. My friend and I came to the conclusion that the 
> techs must think that the viruses have some physical form, perhaps as 
> nanobots, and can eat through silicon and copper:)

Well you get what you pay for in tech support (and htey don't pay much I
suspect).  Then again maybe sometimes they don't even get what they pay
for. :)

Lennart Sorensen
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