[TAG] Another dead PC

[Ben Okopnik]

On Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 04:17:28PM +0100, Bradley Chapman wrote:
> Ben,
> 
> On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 09:26:21 -0400, Ben Okopnik <ben at genetikayos.com> wrote:
> > Hi, folks -
> > 
> > My laptop's video died on me yesterday (second laptop in a row to do that,
> > and the third HW failure on this Acer. You can guess my future intentions
> > in regard to buying another Acer ever again...) According to their tech
> > support - where they could not file a repair ticket because a storm had
> > knocked out all their power except for phones - it'll take a week or more
> > to repair. I'm going to see about getting some kind of a temp replacement
> > on Monday, but for the moment, I'm /sans/ PC (emailing this from the
> > girlfriend's place via SSH to LG.net.)
> 
> :-P
> 
> That's terrible. Are you going to dump this laptop (if it can be
> repaired) and get a new one anytime soon?

Y'know, that's an excellent idea. This thing's had three HW failures in the
several months since I bought it - and yeah, warranty, free parts,
blah-blah, but I still get to pay for the downtime by not having a good
machine available for chunks of time. When I get it back from Acer, I'm
putting it on eBay. As much as I like giving the under-dogs a chance, Acer
has simply not proven out in the reliability, useability, or Linuxability
(ease of Linux installation) department. Fie, evil creature - get thee to
eBay, go!

For the moment, I've "rented" a new HP Pavillion z5000 from Staples
(they've got a 14-day return policy, and the manager has waved the standard
restocking charge.) So far, it doesn't look too bad - I've got my HD in
there and have run it from there as well as booting Knoppix and Morphix
(which last I found to be quite nicely useable and intuitive; so did my gf,
who's never used Linux before.) I'm not 100% sold on it, but I think that
this is the way I'm going to go with laptop purchases from now on: play
with it for a week or so via a loaded HD or a bootable Linux CD, and only
then decide if it suits. I *never* would have bought the Acer if I'd done
that previously.


* Ben Okopnik * okopnik.freeshell.org * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette *
-*- See the Linux Gazette in its new home: <http://linuxgazette.net> -*-