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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.)
If you go that route, and have to send the machine back for a repair, leave the hard drive out of it when you send it to them. Is it unreasonable to request that the customer keeps the hard drive (sensitive information) when they back to the manufacturer for repair?
Just about every personal computer since mid 90's (Macs excepted) is designed to run a flavor of Windows. 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. Do you think Intel and AMD could not make a multi-core processor until about last year? They could do it since almost ever (I have seen multi-processor 386 systems), but there would be next to no market for them as Windows 98 couldn't use more than one processor.
Truth is - most computers are really designed to run Windows and this has inhibited or postponed many technical advances. We still use glorified 5150's.
BTW, manufacturers are quite happy with this.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I sole-boot linux on a Dell, and when my file system got corrupted, I ran badblocks to make sure it was a hard disk issue. It turned out to be a bunch of bad sectors in the middle of my drive. So I called Dell, completely explained the situation, including the sole-boot and running badblocks, and not only did the guy not hang up on me, he started talking about linux with me and seemed actually supportive of it. He asked me to boot into the recovery partition (which I had obviously deleted), so I told him I wiped it, and he asked me to boot onto the recovery CD. The regular CD diagnostics that he told me to run was just a simple memtest and a very high level HDD read test, both of which passed. I knew the disk was dead though, so I told him I was going to run some other of Dell's tests (they have multiple HDD tests), and he said he would call me back. He called back in about an hour, and sure enough there were multiple read errors. I got my new disk (they even gave me an extra 40GB free) overnight. So whatever HP does, and whatever crap Dell takes, Dell still gets my support for their support.