Taking HP to the BBB...?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:11:09PM -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Not for you, but it could be a biggie to HP tech support. And if you're  
> giving in a system for warranty repair, they need to use their own tools  
> of choice to determine what's wrong.

And are you going to give them the machine with your data on it and
your password?  They can darn well put in another drive with a known
good copy of windows to run their tools.

>> Bob quoted $100 for the Windows OS, maybe chump change to you but  
>> that's a lot of coffee money to me.
> The $100 is closer to a retail price. OEMs pay a LOT less, especially if  
> it's XP rather than Windows. When doing research a few months ago I  
> found OEMs who were paying $45 each -- and even that could be reduced by  
> subsisides from companies (like Symantec) that want to pre-install demo  
> software on every system. And bigger volume buyers such as HP could be  
> paying even less per copy.
>
> So if you expect to get back more than $40 or so you're probably  
> dreaming. That's less than three weeks of Starbucks.
>
> Which brings me back to my original question... what is your time worth?

Certainly a good question.  Of course someone has to convince these
companies that not everyone wants a machine with windows on it.

> That sends NOBODY a useful message and is just painful for all involved.  
> You should be telling your purchaser that HP laptops do not support  
> Windows and that (s)he should be partronizing a vendor that does.

So which vendors are those currently?

> It's one thing to be taken by surprise by HP's actions, but now you  
> should know better. Encouraging someone else to make a new HP laptop  
> purchase, KNOWING that HP laptop division is Linux-hostile, is just  
> exceptionally poor consumerism. And your fight against HP will be  
> largely solitary, and as likely as not to be unsuccessful.
>
> So says you. The marketplace does not work that way, however. If people  
> choose to boycott HP printers -- that have fantastic Linux support --  
> because their laptop division is Linux-hostile, then HP has *less*  
> incentive to support Linux moving forward. In other words, your actions  
> -- if followed by others -- will surely make HP move closer to 0 than to  
> 100%.
>
> I prefer more positive strategy. It's more-fullfilling (and easier) to  
> reward the friendly rather than to punish the hostile.

Certainly true.

I will buy Dell LCD monitors (but only the good ones, not the cheap
crap ones).  I would never dream of buying one of their computers though.

Support the good stuff and avoid the crap.  If enough people did, then
perhaps there would be less crap sold.  Of course if everyone was that
sensible we wouldn't have spam either since no one would ever have bought
anything from a spam message and hence there would be zero profit in spam.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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