I don't own any Compaq products, but I do own 3 IBM ThinkPad laptops. I've never given warranties a whole lot of concern, until I had the LCD in my "big" laptop start acting up. It's a TP770ED, with 14.1" 1024x768 LCD, 8.1GB, DVD, 128MB, yada yada yada. I've had it for about 2 years now.
About a year ago, the LCD started acting up. It would start strobing on and off, on a 1/2 second interval or so. Also, the battery wasn't charging. I *finally* got around to calling IBM to get it fixed.
I talked to this woman named Diane, who was great. She gets the model numbers of the unit. Asks about the battery FRU number, tells me the one I have has problems, they'll Airborne me a new one, even though it's out of warranty ("We're just replacing them all"). They Airborne me a shipping box for the laptop. Next day, the boxes show up, I pack the old battery and the laptop, drive by Airborne (it was on the way somewhere). All the stickers and everything are pre-printed. All I have to do is put checkmarks on the form for the laptop inventory (I didn't ship the drive, it has too much proprietary info on it).
5 days later (3 working days, just as advertised), my lappy-top comes back, all nicely fixed. About my *only* complaint is one corner of the cover wasn't fully snapped down. Took me 10 seconds to fix it.
I'm told that other laptop manufacturers have similiar service policies. Maybe so. All I know is that I'd cheerfully buy another IBM laptop, simply because of the service. I could have had the thing fixed a year ago, but I was too slack. Now I regret the time I spent cursing the display blinking on and off on me.
As far as drivers, I haven't tried to install Linux on the 770ED. Linux is running fine on my 755Cx, but I don't use the sound, and I'm not running X. It's simply a firewall, with 2 PCMCIA ethernet cards in it. The drivers for the 770ED are very extensive for NT 4.0 and Win2K, which is what I run it. Recovery disks are free for the asking, as long as you can demonstrate the right to ownership of W95 or NT (depending on how you ordered the laptop). Frankly, that seems reasonable to me. Their net support is quite good, and the forums they run *generally* get correct answers to people fairly quickly.
All in all, IBM rocks.
--Chris
e-mail jcwren | [reply] |
I've had excellent experience with the Quantex support people. Quantex has replaced for me two hard drives, a motherboard, and a monitor all of which were airborne'd to me and they paid for the shipping of them back. I was also in a similar situation to you, where I had deleted Windows but then some time later decided I wanted Windows on the machine but had lost the CD's, I called them up and they sent me free of charge a Windows 95 cd and a cd of all the drivers. Also, when I ordered the computer it was delayed a week and a half because they were waiting for a shipment of cpu's from Intel, so they upgraded my video card to the best model they sold for free. | [reply] |
Stay away from Dell as well. More in-depth information on my hellish attempt to install linux on a Lattitude LS can be found here, but here's a quick summary:
1) Dell puts a hidden partition on all of their machines that fdisk/diskdruid cannot rewrite without fscking the whole disk. What lives on the partition? A program called "zztop".
2) Dell "upgraded" the BIOS on the LS series. The "upgraded" bios broke sound support on Linux, which worked fine with the older revision.
3) When I called Dell and found out about the hidden partition (which I wiped to install linux), they offered to send me a new harddrive. I asked them to send me a virgin blank one without windows on it. They agreed, and a week later I had a new hard drive.With the fskcking hidden partition on it. Again.
So the moral of this story is, "Dell laptops bite ass". Or the moral could be "I'm really drooling over my coworkers VAIO".
BlueLines
Disclaimer: This post may contain inaccurate information, be habit forming, cause atomic warfare between peaceful countries, speed up male pattern baldness, interfere with your cable reception, exile you from certain third world countries, ruin your marriage, and generally spoil your day. No batteries included, no strings attached, your mileage may vary. | [reply] |
I haven't had much luck finding anything on the drivers I need.
I haven't had much luck with the Dells either. I really wish that Compaq had told me the D: was for rebuilding so I could have backed the drive. up, but NO!
Ahh well, it's just more work.
Cardinal Ximenez
Nobody expects the The Spanish Inquisition
| [reply] |
DriverGuide.com has a lot of drivers for all sorts of things, old and new. I would suggest you check there for the drivers you need. Free registration required though.
HTH, Cheers! | [reply] |