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HP Dishonors Warranty If You Load Linux
darkonc points us to a writeup on linux.com about a very Linux-unfriendly policy at HP. A woman bought a Compaq laptop and loaded Ubuntu on it. Some time later, still well inside the 1-year hardware warranty, the keyboard started acting up. An HP support rep told her, "Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux." Gateway and Dell refused to comment to the reporter on what they would do in a similar situation. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)
dell is ALSO guilty:
r um=1004&thread=22581483
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?fo
no WONDER why they had 'no comment'.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
As somebody who worked at various helpdesks for a few years as a phone monkey, this is SOP with any company. You can't run through the troubleshooting scripts unless the software on the PC is exactly or very close to the initial load. Helpdesk people are not trained to solve problems, just go through the appropriate steps. So, if you want your warranty honored, suck it up and install Windows. You would have known this if you had read the fine print when you bought the damn thing. If you want a Linux notebook, then buy a Linux notebook. Talk about a sense of entitlement...
I don't respond to AC's.
Yea there is, I wish I could remember the name of the law now. Basically it was to protect aftermarket parts makers and people who customize their cars. If I lower the car, only the warranty on the suspension is affected. If I change the mufflers on the car, only the warranty on the exhaust is affected. Here's a link to some info about it from SEMA. http://www.sema.org/main/semaorghome.aspx?ID=50096
FTFA
" "When she called Compaq -- the unit comes with a one-year warranty on the hardware -- they asked what operating system she was running. When she told them Linux, they said, "Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux." In order to get warranty service, she was told, she would have to remove Linux and reinstall the original OS."
HP didn't refuse warranty coverage, they told he she needed to remove Linux and reinstall the original OS to get warranty service.
That is completely reasonable. The script readers doing the trouble shooting at HP wouldn't be able to trouble shoot a system that didn't have the OS on it that HP originally installed.
in my experience (twice now) Dell will honor their warranty if you run Linux (but then I always return the laptop without the hard drive), but both times I told them I ran linux
Back in the old days, some monitors would fail to sync to some refresh rates, and the display would collapse to a dot in the centre of the screen, which would burn a hole in the phosphor (or worse).
I don't think monitors like that have been sold for the last 20 years or so, but the warning has never been removed from the manual.
Most monitors sold in the last 10 years know which resolutions/refresh rates they support and will display an appropriate error screen if you feed it the wrong signal.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This has nothing to do with Linux. I once owned a Toshiba that came with Win98 installed. I had installed Win2000 on the computer as a dual boot with the win98. Later I was having some hardware issues that fell under warranty. On the phone, the technician told me that I had to have the original Win98 on the computer. I explained that I had it but I dual boot into win2000. That wasn't good enough. It had to have the original configuration only. I hung up and called back and lied about only having win98 installed.
From their point of view, they need to have the software in a known state so that they can troubleshoot the hardware. They don't want to go to the expense of sending out a technician (I had an on-site warranty) if the problem turned out to not be hardware related and they needed to know that the technician will be familiar with the OS so they can do their troubleshooting as well.
I know it's fun to jump on the "everyone is against Linux" bandwagon but this just isn't the case in this situation.
www.joshferguson.org
Having done full time tech support as my primary job through my undergrad and as part time during grad school, I can tell you this is true in call center tech support. I've worked for shops having the onsite service contract for an area with HP, but this basically is just go install replacement parts for customers to afraid to open the case. I have worked phone support for Gateway, Dell, and MS.
From my experience I would say that a Gateway tech would probably tell you the same line since the are under a strict time deadline at most of thier centers unless its changed a lot since I worked for them. Dell's environment for the techs isn't nearly as bad, so you would probably not get it nearly as often there, and to MS's credit they had no time limits; all they cared about was getting the customer's issue fixed even if you were on one call all day. MS also mandated much better training for the techs than Gateway and Dell did, although Dell was a better than Gateway on this by a little bit.
Technically the policies for any of the com panies I did phone support for would not support this BS. All the tech has to do to bypass any driver issues, OS issues, or other nonsense would be to test the keyboard in the BIOS, or boot from the Windows CD that came with the system and get to a command prompt that was to test it. Worst case should be that they require the customer to reinstall windows and then test it, and replace the keyboard as needed at that point.
Again I only worked onsite for HP, and it has been years since I did tech support for a living, but this is at least speaking from someone who has a lot of experience in the area.
Same here, though I just use a second HD for Linux and FreeBSD. BTW: I just contacted HP through chat, and asked if running Linux/FreeBSD would void my warranty. The answer was that running Linux would not void the warranty of my particular model (Pavilion t.490). It took a minute or 2 for the answer, but, it seems like HP does have some sort of list of Linux-compatible models. 8 years ago, I loaded FreeBSD on a Toshiba laptop (Satellite 320CDT). The first time I used X, I was greeted with a loud high pitched sound from the video-circuit (second try was ok), so I can understand the no-warranty statement for certain problems on certain models. Though I can't understand the relation between keyboard problems, loading Linux and no warranty. PS: During the support-chat, it was mentioned three times that Windows would run best, the computer was designed for Windows and I could not get support for Linux.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
I would think that under the Magnusson-Moss Warranty act that her machine is still warranted by law.
The act says that you can't tie people to only certain products. It's why having your car's brakes fixed at a small shop doesn't void the vehicle's warranty. If you look at Linux as just a part then she should have recourse.
I'd take them to small claims.
It seems to be covered here
"Tie-In Sales" Provisions Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. The following are examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.
Seems to me that saying use Windows or no warranty is a violation.
Standard disclaimer = IANAL
I had to send my HP laptop in for warranty repair once. They told me the hard drive would be formatted, which I refused. After a few minutes of me basically telling them, "look, the AC socket is physically broken and it has nothing to do with software", they agreed that I could send in the computer without the hard drive.
I suggest that anyone having hardware issues with a computer running Linux do the same: explain to the tech support people that the issue has nothing to do with software, and that you've diagnosed the specific hardware failure. Make sure they let you send in the computer for repair without the hard drive included, so you won't have them hassling you about what OS you run.
My bicyles
Exception: a firmware updater. If hardware has firmware that can be updated, you can hose it with software by uploading broken firmware. The hardware should check to see if the checksums are right and stuff like that, but that won't keep somebody who wants to break hardware from doing so. There's usually no good way to prevent that; the firmware must be valid for the device to show up on the bus so that you can flash the firmware. Thus, if the firmware is hosed, so is the device. I suppose that for a bit more money, you could do an unwritable base image with a reset button, but that only helps if you know about the reset button. Your typical user would simply see it as a dead device.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I sent my notebook in to HP earlier this year because the keyboard was acting up. I reported that the behavior was the same in Windows and Linux. They replaced the keyboard and a couple of other things with no problem. . .
"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. [...] It's what drives men mad, being methodical." G.K.Chesterton
Do you wonder why most probably there are no Alpha or MIPS desktop computers around you? That's right - because there is no version of Windows and Office for them.
I do have an Alpha close enough so my knee can touch it. It runs Win NT 4 and though I don't have it MS did release a version of Office to run on it. I think the only reason Alpha didn't last long was because DEC dropped the ball. They didn't do enough to market Alphas, Amiga deja vu all over again. They also didn't work on FX!32 enough to get it working tranlating software. On my Alpha I was only able to install one commecial app and a few shareware programs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
They replaced one of the two hard drives, the RAM, and something else. Technically, they would have replaced Linux, they informed me that they may image the drives. When I got it, the drive had been imaged, but it had also been logged into and I could see they had used some windows based tools to check the new drive's integrity.
I always assume if I'm sending something in, they will re-image the drive. Armed with this knowledge, I always make an image of my own before sending it.
"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. [...] It's what drives men mad, being methodical." G.K.Chesterton