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Dell Thinks Ubuntu Makes Hardware More Fragile?
WolfWings writes "Apparently Dell has decided that Ubuntu-based computers are ineligible for their famed CompleteCare service, or any form of hardware warranty what-so-ever. The news has only recently hit Dell's own IdeaStorm website, via a forum post describing an interaction with the company's customer service. Says the customer, 'I am looking for protection from bricks. The laws of physics do not differ from one OS to the other...do they?' After so recently decided to support Linux on their machines, including limited technical support, Dell seems to be squandering any possible good-will with this decision to leave purchasers of these machines high and dry for hardware warranty coverage." Update: 06/05 23:40 GMT by KD : many readers let us know that Dell has said that the omission of extended warranty and CompleteCare options from the configurator for Ubuntu systems was an "ordering system glitch." It should be fixed by now according to DesktopLinux.com.
It would be a triviality to write a shell script that uses Zenity to present dialogs etc and which performs simple fault-finding operations, displays certain system files.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This wouldn't be the first time we've seen a phone rep make an incorrect statement about hardware support/warranty when Linux is installed.
For those not going to read the attached article (or who didn't the first time around), in the end the phone rep was mistaken and misunderstood the policy and HP handled the hardware repair under warranty.
But in this case, probably rightly so. When I bought my E520N on opening day, it said I had a warranty, so I'd expect them to honor it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Last time I had a problem with my Uninspiron the Dell techie instructed me to open up the
front remove a few parts and reseat the screen conection.
When I expressed surprise he said this was Dells standard troubleshhooting procedure.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Dells already got a full deck of diagnostics for the hardware. The problem is when someone calls in with the equivelant of a windows blue screen, the hardware all checks out, but something is wrong. In this case on a windows machine I'd go ahead and help the customer out with a windows issue until it was fixed. I love ubuntu linux to death but I'm not trained on it and I'd be scrounging around like a noob trying to help people. It's going to take alil while to get all us agents off the phones and trained in a new OS. I'm planning on signing up for the training and moving over to XPS to support the ubuntu machines but it takes time. Everyone that's going to support linux is working on the phones right now, they have to plan for us to take time off the phones while balancing out the call volumes and then go through the growing pains as we start supporting the OS and make lil gaffs etc here and there. Hardware warranty support doesn't mean that we can point blank tell the customers software isn't supported and hang up on them, that'd be bad buisness and a bad customer experience and we're all highly trained that customer satisfaction is what counts above all else at the end of the day.
If they "know" all that, they're delusional. Can you point out a single case where someone has successfully sued Microsoft because something went wrong? Having someone to call at 3 AM who can and will help you troubleshoot your problems is a good reason, but you don't get it just by buying commercial software, you have to buy a very expensive support contract, something you can just as easily do for Linux software as for Windows software.
This is an old, old argument in favor of closed-source software, but it doesn't hold any water, and never has.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Then you post as "Plain Old Text" mode.
That's nice. Except that Slashdot defaults to "HTML Formatted", not "Plain Old Text". For someone who has posted only two other times, they may not be aware of the formatting drop down menu, and would not necessarily know when to switch the formatting. Also, "Plain Old Text" mode isn't plain old text. It eats some html markup. The only way to see what happens is to Preview.
In my opinion, Slashdot should remove the Submit button from the post screen, and force everyone to preview.
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