NewEgg: Installing Linux Breaks Laptop

Rick Zeman writes "According to the normally geek-friendly online store Newegg , installing Linux Mint is tantamount to breaking your new Lenovo laptop. Is it the purchaser's fault for not restoring the laptop to its original state of Windows-y goodness, or is NewEgg being too dogmatic trying to enforce a term that doesn't seem to exist?"

Comments

Re:Where are my discs?

[Microlith]

Virtually no vendors these days include a restore CD. Instead they include a junkware riddled "restore partition." Microsoft stopped letting them include clean OEM install CDs years ago.

I had issues too

[SoupGuru]

I bought a refurb laptop from Newegg a couple of months ago and received it with an obvious screen defect. The CSR was very nice and helpful and got me an RMA and a UPS label and all that lickety split, no hassle. I sent it in and got an email update a few days later that there was nothing wrong and they were sending it back. So I called in again and this CSR was very helpful too and got me the refund with very little hassle again.

I don't know what's going on in their laptop repair department.... a manager that doesn't care?

Any time I've had to interact with a Newegg CSR, this time and others, things have been splendid and I've never had an issue getting a problem resolved.

Re:Unit cannot be resold as received?

[Venotar]

Really, glitchy drivers? Way to RTFA: "On the third day of use a loud coil squeal/chirp became apparent, becoming louder when it was running on battery power. Within hours the wireless chipset failed and refused to connect, the display began glitching with horizontal lines appearing through it, and it became unresponsive. I tested it with a Windows live USB thumb drive"

Re:We've become too comfortable.

[Hatta]

If I understand correctly, the Magnum Moss Warranty Act prohibits vendors from tying warranty coverage to branded components unless they can demonstrate that the failure was due to the third party component.

No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or implied warranty of such product on the consumerâ(TM)s using, in connection with such product, any article or service (other than article or service provided without charge under the terms of the warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name; except that the prohibition of this subsection may be waived by the Commission ifâ"
(1) the warrantor satisfies the Commission that the warranted product will function properly only if the article or service so identified is used in connection with the warranted product, and
(2) the Commission finds that such a waiver is in the public interest.
The Commission shall identify in the Federal Register, and permit public comment on, all applications for waiver of the prohibition of this subsection, and shall publish in the Federal Register its disposition of any such application, including the reasons therefor.

Re:Thank you.

[spicate]

Out of their millions of customers, one had a bad experience. You could find the same with any company. I've returned numerous products to NewEgg without a problem, and they typically have excellent prices and top-quality service. This may be a sign of things to come, but it's a little bit of an overreaction to write them off so quickly.

Re:Unit cannot be resold as received?

[danomac]

Yes, some drivers can cause issues. My laptop came with Vista, which I despise, and so I installed linux on it. Everything mostly worked properly with the exception of the hard-wired lan port and the occasional hang. During my own troubleshooting, I discovered one problem would happen in both OSs and one would not. It turns out a linux driver was causing issues with the temperature probe or something similar and was overheating. So I can understand why manufacturers void the warranty when software can cause the machine to overheat and do nasty things. The LAN port was actually defective. I fixed the temperature issue by getting a bleeding edge copy of lm_sensors.

In my case, I tarballed my linux install to an external HDD and restored an image I took before I installed linux and sent it back for servicing (which was repaired and sent back to me.)

In the article it says the BIOS tests confirmed an error. Who knows if it was a rogue driver that caused it?

Old Policy, still used...

[TeddyR]

Old news. This has been Neweggs policy for a while now...

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/97248/index.html

http://parrot-farm.net/Newegg/Newegg.com%20Horror%20Story.html

I stopped buying computers from them in 2007 as well. (still get the occasinal HD or videocard)...

Re:Unit cannot be resold as received?

[cayenne8]

Not sure about the current stuff, but I remember way back in the early days of Linux, if you set up your X config incorrectly you could actually fry video cards by feeding them values they couldn't happen.

Actually, it wasn't so much the video cards, it was the actual CRT monitor you could 'smoke'.....