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Dell Thinks Ubuntu Makes Hardware More Fragile?
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jun 05, 2007 10:41 AM
from the well-known-disruptory-rays dept.
from the well-known-disruptory-rays dept.
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.
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Of course... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm the brick guy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm the brick guy (Score:4, Insightful)
Who wrote Dell's order system? It seems like anything that falls outside the realm of a "typical order" just gets kicked out with no notice to the customer.
A couple years ago, my wife and I ordered new computers for both of us. After a week of nothing, we called to find out the order exceeded some maximum dollar amount so it could not be processed. We had to re-order everything over the phone (listing off all the options while the customer service person keyed it into their system) as two separate orders.
My first question is why would the online system let me place an order that cannot be completed?
The second question is, why wouldn't someone contact me if my order is "stuck"?
Re:I'm the brick guy (with whitespace) (Score:4, Informative)
My guess at the whitespace (nothing has been modified except whitespace):
This is like my third post ever on slashdot. I read it often, though. I am the guy with the brick quote. Here is the whole story to be fair to Dell.
On Friday, my laptop died. It was an Acer. The screen was damaged. Replacement cost of cracked screen is more than halfway to the cost of a new laptop. So I decide I will support the new Ubuntu Dell Laptops. I go online to Dell's Website and go to the Ubuntu page. I choose the E1505n. I upgrade to a GB of Ram, I get the Nvidia 256 MB graphics card, I get the DVD burner optical drive. So far so good. I am happy with the default processor and the screen.
Now, another driving factor is that Dell has the nifty cool complete care (tm) plan. With this bad boy, a random brick can fly through the air, hit my laptop, shatter it to threads, and Dell will cover it. Think of it more as an insurance plan than a service plan. I have a friend with 3 kids who has had to take advantage of it not once, but twice. Both times Dell took care of them no questions asked. Now, the first time the Dell laptop had XP on it...the second time..gentoo. Still, no problems here. So, I decide to get it....just in case I get burned twice.
On June 2, I get an email telling me my order has been acknowledged and I will get another email shortly giving me a order number (I also paid for next day shipping). Well, the rest of June 2 and all of June 3 goes by. No new email. I check my spam folder...nada...just the usual assortment of male enhancement and refi deals.
So on June 4 I call Dell. They can see no order...they can see they debited my account...but no order. Hmmm...confusing. Very sorry, sir. Let me talk to my supervisor, please hold. She has no explanation for the lost order, but she will reprocess the order and I will get my next day shipping for free since I lost time. YAY! But wait! When we "build" my Dell, there is no longer a Complete Care (tm) plan for Ubuntu. She puts me on hold. She find out that my order was bumped out since they changed the policy on offering Complete Care (tm) on Ubuntu Dells. Why? She puts me on hold.
Now comes the fun.
"Sir, Ubuntu is a third party software and applications come from sources not from Dell."
"Vista is a product of Dell?"
"No sir, but we have a relationship with MS."
"So you do not have a relationship with Canonical, the commercial company that sponsors Ubuntu?"
"Hold.........Yes we do, but the software for other things comes from third parties."
"So what if I buy a game for a Vista laptop from Best Buy? As that is a third party software..does that invalidate a Complete Care (tm) policy?"
"No, sir."
"What if I download an update from Microsoft to keep my Vista Current, how does that differ from an update from Ubuntu other than the fact the Ubuntu update actually helps my system?"
"I do not know sir. See, sir, Linux comes from all over the place and as such cannot be supported."
"I believe Redhat and even Microsoft differ with that opinion. I am not looking for support, that is another option I can click on another screen in your website. I am looking for protection from bricks. The laws of physics do not differ from one OS to the other...do they?"
"No Sir."
"Talking to your superior will not help my cause, do you have the phone number and email address of an executive do you?"
She gave it to me. I wrote an email. I expressed my concerns politely and professionally.
The next day-early this morning, I got a reply from a Dell Representative named Todd. Todd wrote,
"Mr. Green, Thank you for your note and a chance to solve this issue. I am about to get on an airplane, but will get your issue to our executive resolution team. They should be able to resolve. If you are not satisfied, please do not hesitate to contact me again. Thank you for your business. Todd XXXXX"
I will be honest, I thought it was a passing of the hot potato.
However, earlier this m
Re:I'm the brick guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing this isn't a news site otherwise they should've contacted Dell first to get their side of the sto......... Hey ! It says 'news for nerds'!!!
To all the people who are starting to shout at Dell in the rest of the thread : First people start bitchin' about Dell nog providing a Linux option.. Then Dell listens and acts in a relatively short time, and has not yet have everything 100% as it should be. And people start bitching here again. Cut 'm some slack will ya people? They are getting there. With a bad attitude, you'll have other companies think again before going the Linux way !
I'm the Ubuntu Forums guy (Score:5, Informative)
Actually I work for Canonical full time at their global support centre. I also happen to volunteer in the forums and I saw this post in several places. I forwarded it internally to Canonical Staff and it's been passed to Dell.
Cheers,
Fabian Rodriguez
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FabianRodriguez [ubuntu.com]
Re:I'm the brick guy (Score:5, Informative)
Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes please check dmesg | grep ERROR. Try saying that to someone who doesnt know what a shell is.
Re:Support (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Support (Score:5, Insightful)
We do Dell warranty service where I work and I have to say that they're not very good computers and other than price, I can't see why you would buy one. This Ubuntu ordeal is just more of the same bs customers have to put up with. On the other hand I wish customers would get it through their thick skulls that their data is not covered under warranty.
Re:Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Dell, if you tell us the checks you want to have made, we will write the software for you. If you want our help though, then it needs to be a win-win situation, and you need to support the physical hardware you sell us.
Re:Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Support (Score:5, Interesting)
Give Dell *SOME* credit... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but it makes for a nice headline, eh? I think it more likely they believe their users will mis-identify software issues as hardware issues and request replacement hardware. Further, it would also cost them extra to have personell on hand (familiar enough with the OS) to help RESOLVE hardware issues. Either way, it costs them more.
It's not entirely unreasonable to charge more for a warranty coverage. It *IS* odd not to provide coverage at all, though.
But not because Dell denies that "The laws of physics do not differ from one OS to the other". That's just frustrated customer venting...
No Techs (Score:4, Informative)
They really have no way to solve software issues, which makes it extremely difficult to determine whether an issue is a hardware or a software problem. So rather than retrain or recruit thousands of onsite techs, and pour millions of dollars into creating new Linux checklists for India, they would just assume offer only limited support.
Two possibilities come to mind... (Score:5, Insightful)
1.) Dell does not have the tools or expertise in house to do this yet, but will in the future. So, they got pressured into releasing their Linux PCs before they were ready to support them. Incompetence maybe, but not malice.
2.) Dell simply put out Linux PCs to shut the geek crowd up and get them to buy Dells. However, they don't really want to support Linux, so they designed the program to fail. This way, when they cancel this offering in a year or two due to poor sales, they can say they tried, but Linux on the desktop just doesn't work.
I want to believe it's reason 1, but the added fact that Dell doesn't seem to be advertising this thing at all, and the fact that you actually have to jump through some hoops on the website to even see that the option is available, makes me think that reason 2 isn't entirely impossible either.
Re:Two possibilities come to mind... (Score:5, Informative)
866-622-1947
When I called it, the person that answered said they were the Dell Linux tech support group. So I think they DO have people in house to support Linux.
We are a fickle group, aren't we. (Score:4, Insightful)
Admittedly, there are issues with not having any hardware warranty, but do we need to get so incendiary against someone who is trying to work with us?
This is slashdot, so, of course we're fickle. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We are a fickle group, aren't we. (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially when, this being Slashdot, everything gets overblown.
These machines come with a hardware warranty.
They don't come with the ability to purchase an extended warranty.
Now, this makes some sense. Loading Dells with Linux is a trial thing. This is not something they want to figure out how to support long-term yet; if this doesn't work for them, having four and five year service contracts out there they have to cover is going to make this a very expensive prospect. They're willing to make sure they have Linux expertise around to support these things for their base warranty time, whether or not it turns out they can make a buck selling Linux systems long-term. But it makes sense that they wouldn't want to keep Linux geeks around (which, let's face it, cost more than Windows monkeys) long term if they can't sell these things long-term.
I wouldn't get upset just yet (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The 6 stages of every project. (Score:5, Insightful)
4.) The search for the guilty.
See, in a corporate world, Windows servers and Windows workstations are used for one simple reason. When something goes wrong, they know who to take to court. They know who to blame. They know who to call on the phone at 3 AM and work all night trying to solve a critical server process that likes to eat memory or crash.
Now, seeing as how applications exist that can modify hardware (read: brick it) then something tells me that Dell isn't going to warantee a mainboard when they can't call up and say "Hey, that patch you released bricked our onboard sound chip / video / lan / cdrom firmware."
For those of you interested, the 6 stages of every project are as follows:
1.) Enthusiasm.
2.) Disillusionment.
3.) Panic.
4.) The Search For The Guilty.
5.) The Punishment of the Innocent.
6.) Accolades for the Non-Participants.
3 good business reasons (Score:4, Informative)
2. Yes, linux drivers can crash hardware. I crashed my nikon film scanner using a beta SANE driver. Read the warning; chose to ignore it, drove the scan head off the end of the screw. $2000 broken toy. This was a few years ago, so may not be true anymore.
3. Dell would prefer to be seen as more friendly towards windows. If they say, in effect, "We support PCs with windows. We'll sell you a PC and even preload a GNU distro, but that's strictly your responsibility", they're keeping a major supplier happy.
Hey, they're good *business* reasons.
They may not coincide with your personal ideology, but why should they?
Re:Not to excuse Dell, but maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
front remove a few parts and reseat the screen conection.
When I expressed surprise he said this was Dells standard troubleshhooting procedure.