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

Unit cannot be resold as received?

[crazyjj]

In their reply they said "Unit cannot be accepted or resold as received." Did she make it clear in her initial call that she was returning it for a hardware defect, and not just a general "I'm unsatisfied with it" return? I'm pretty sure that ANY hardware defective computer, with original OS or not, cannot be "resold as received." It sounds like the RMA may have mistakenly been issued as if it were a general return when it should have listed it as a hardware defect return.

Re:Unit cannot be resold as received?

[hawguy]

Even if there weren't a hardware defect, shouldn't they wipe the disk and reinstall the OS from scratch (to protect the second buyer from the possibility that the first buyer got some malware).

Sounds like a good way to do identity theft - buy a laptop, install your favorite malware (infecting the Windows recovery partition to make it permanent just in case they do a recovery), then return it and let Bestbuy resell it to an unsuspecting customer. Use that user's stolen credit card/bank account details to repeat the process with another batch of laptops.

Re:Unit cannot be resold as received?

[cpu6502]

AGAIN if you had read the article, you would know. The user tried running the laptop with Windows and the wireless modem still did not work.

I wonder if you bought a laptop with Vista on it and then upgraded to Win7 would that also be covered by "original manufacturer's operating system has been removed." Newegg would probably deny it too.

Fuckers.'
Burn their building to the ground.
(I hate megacorps. Can you tell?)

Re:Unit cannot be resold as received?

[Deathlizard]

Having to deal with E520's (the E525's are the AMD Variants), It's the PC.

Now of course, the E525 is a bit different than the E520, but the Minute I read buzzing, MB immediately came to mind. We had no less than 20 of our E520 lot buzz over this past year. Most of them were the MB, but a few of them were the NIC/Power Board. In one case, the NIC/Power board actually melted and was smoking due to a Bad MB. Surprised one hasn't caught on fire yet.

The other thing that goes bad is the LCD panels, which shows horizontal lines on them. I believe this is due to the way the LCD Panel is connected to the board. In many cases just flexing the case was enough to cause this to occur.

The other big failure that they have is Fan Errors. apparently a small sticker on the case gets sucked in the fan which stops it. pretty much have to take the whole thing apart to get at it too.

All I can say is that Lenovo is not IBM when it comes to Laptop build quality and leave it at that.

Re:NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is the go-to site for tech stuff?

Re:Unfortunate Reality of Being a Linux User

[TheGratefulNet]

its often less effort to open the machine, remove its drive, put drive on shelf (before first ever boot) and put your own laptop drive in (maybe even an ssd) and do whatever you need to.

I have not stepped on a shipped os, probably ever. drives are cheap and I'll get a 2nd one to use for my own stuff. its exactly like this situation that you keep the original o/s and for me, the original drive sits unused.

time is what I don't have lots of and doing an image backup then verify then restore later on is 3 steps I'd rather not do. yank the drive, do your stuff on your and if hardware craps out, shove the old drive back in and return it for fixing/warr work.

plus, you NEVER have any of you files on that drive. no sector scan will EVER have your stuff on it. ever. that's nice, too!

Re:We've become too comfortable.

[Anonymous Coward]

We've forgotten the fact that essentially using Linux does void your warranty in most cases.

This is just plain untrue. Got some examples to support your claim that this is indeed true in most cases? Probably not, at least outside of sub-Saharan Africa, so let me explain how warranties work:

Limited hardware warranties are put in place so manufacturers/sellers can meet their legal obligations (and be competitive). No number of elaborate clauses allow a company to step away from its legal obligations. Mainstream and well known companies tend to exceed the minimum requirements of the law. It's a better customer experience Installing Linux can be used as a basis for voiding non-legally required support - such as software support and extended support contracts. It cannot be used to void the hardware warranty, but can be used to refuse a repair if the use of the software can reasonably be attributed as a cause for the hardware failure. Support monkies and shop gimps may say talk about voiding the warranty. Just ask them to have that in writing - this won't happen. Ask them to show you where in the terms of their limited warranty it explains that installing Linux voids the hardware warranty they are legally obliged to provide. They won't have anything in there, except perhaps a vague reference to unintended use of the product. With this they have a pretty fucking difficult argument unless they clearly sell the computer for use only with x operating system.

Re:Unfortunate Reality of Being a Linux User

[bill_mcgonigle]

you can also use something like Clonezilla to make a complete backup of the original drive onto an external or network drive.

I always use something like:

gzip /dev/sda | nc myserver 33333

and

nc -l 33333 > foo-laptop-2012-06-image.gz

so far I just have a bunch of worthless images cluttering up one of my server disks, and I'll probably delete them when I get rid of the hardware, but who knows, maybe they'll be needed some day.