Dell limited battery warranty is a swindle

American Law is virtually the same as English Law on things like this. Your correspondent will be delighted to know that this type of case has already been tested. Where a product is faulty, whether formally declared or not, and a replacement issued, the warranty clock starts ticking again as if the product were brand new and purchased as of the date the replacement is received (NOT posted by Dell!).

Attempts for suppliers to limit replacement warranties in this way (which is common and relies on ignorance of Law), whatever they wish to say in small print, renders them doubly guilty, also on seeking to impose 'unfair terms', maybe even fraud, which could be a criminal offence. Your correspondent should trot along to his small claims Court with offending product, full documentation and allow the judge/magistrate to adjuducate the extent as well as the quantum of penalty Dell should be served with, and whether the boys in blue need to be called in.

dgl

Subject: Microsoft Vista monopole crime

I read article Microsoft Vista is not an option, It is obvious that Microsoft is a monopolistic compagny and operating system a monopolistic market, it is so obvious. I would add an argument for people who are not convinced, I still use windows 98, because it runs fine and cover my needs, but, windows 98 is no more supported, so no more security update, no more software update from any other sotfware companies.

Why am I forced, to move to XP or vista ? Why the source code of windows 98 is still protected, if not supported by Microsoft ??? That's the right question !!! Any source code of an unsupported application, shouldn't be protected!!!

Such a way of ruling, lowers the progress, that is the wrong result of monopolistic activities and that's why it must be strongly condamned,

Rule Europa !

Guy

Subject: Dell battery Warrenty

The 3 months thing seems typical of most companies. I know with new laptops for example...you may get the 3 year super warrenty but the battery is only covered for a year.

Batteries die. Sometimes it takes years, sometimes not. S#it happens right?

E

Subject: replacement batteries

Three months warrenty on a battery, thats a disgrace. I take it then the replacement batteries were brought as cheap as possible to minimize Dells profit loses.

chris

Subject: reader feedback: A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

That was the most amazing article I've read. This entire DRM/ Content Protection debate illustrates how pathetic and greedy people are. It's extremely counter-productive and wasteful. Once again, we're using our technology to deliberately degrade something. This system wastes so many resources and creates unnecessary hurdles simply to appease short-sighted money-hungry capitalists. I really hope Vista fails. It's amazing, but this situation makes XP look like the last truly clean OS:

This elaborate content-protection system on Vista forces the entire industry to raise the bar on many types of hardware. However, it's not for the sake of better or improved performance. More "horsepower" and silly proprietary hardware designs are required to support this wasteful content protection system, that is silently checking in on your hardware, to make sure you aren't doing anything "illegal." So once again, innocent consumers are punished and forced to upgrade to "compliant" hardware for absolutely no gain in performance.

Hopefully enough intelligent people read articles like this and we can watch MS fail. I'm tired of Microsoft punishing legitimate customers and hindering productivity with intrusive anti-piracy measures.

Just as stupid people chose VHS over BETA, the same morons came out again and chose Microsoft over Apple in the 90's. Linux is the oasis we need, and fast...

Conan O'Brien said it right to Gates' face when he interviewed him at the keynote in Las Vegas last year: "Microsoft just doesn't get it." Bill

Subject: replacement batteries

Dear Letterman!

When the Battery of my 11 month old Acer Laptop died they told me that the battery only has a warranty of 3 months. The annoying part was that the battery was perfectly fine one day and refused to work the next day. Anyway I had to shell out 120€ for a new battery - which funnily enough died after 4 months again...now I'm enjoying a laptop without the portability. Sincerely,
Michael

Subject: Open Sauce

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36464

Open Sauce? Which kind? Onion Garlic or Meat?

Dill

Subject: Longest suicide note in history..

Hi Andrew, thanks for the article and the link, made for some extremely interesting reading.

I installed Vista Business on my main PC last week as we got 100 MSDN licenses while waiting for the site license to kick in. After reading your article, and Gutman's paper, the first thing I'm going to do is uninstall and reinstall XP. I'll never load this piece of crap on any PC again. When PC gaming gets to the stage where it's all DX10 and has to be run Vista, I'll stop playing games on the PC and will buy a PS3 (initial intentions would have been an Xbox360 but I'm not rewarding Microsoft with my dollars for their actions). Thanks for the heads up, Merry Xmas,

Chris

Subject: Dude's Hardware

Hey INQ Dudes.

Games coming out/came out like Crysis, Oblivion, NWN2, Mass Effect, etc. all demand massive hardware nowadays and my once pride n joy comp (amd 3000, 1gb ddr1 ram, x850xt) is being stressed to its limits. This rig wont be able to play Crysis; it already chugs on Oblivion.

I'm in college now and I won't have the resources to play these new games for i'll need another 2000 dollars for a new rig.

Blizzard was badgered for not having a game with graphical beauty and they proved everyone wrong with a 7.5 million player base for knowing and understanding the market. Why can't developers aim for gameplay instead of graphics?

Guys, enough's enough. Drying out pennies for hardware isn't going to help sell more games, it just divides those with money and those without and each new generation is a division and slices the sales pie a little smaller.

This cycle is eventually going to collapse if the gameplay demands do not meet the expectations of the consumer's desire which is this.. "gameplay".

The Dude

Subject: Linux and Mac OS is an great option!

Hi Andrew!

If VISTA needs a medium CAD workstaion with AMD 4200+ CPU (better faster!), 2GB memory, as normal a X1600 graphiccard (better bigger!) and a fast SATA2 Drive and has normal power consumption of nearly 400W, then is LINUX and MAC OS (MAC mini with OS, 19" display and a great Appleworks for around 1.200 Euro!) a great option!

If your normal VISTA workstation with 19" display, OS and OFFICE 2007 will costs around 2.500 to 3.000 Euro, the same fast LINUX Workstation with an smaller AM2 Sempron CPU, 1GB memory, X1600 graphiccard, ATA HDD, 19" Display and with SUSE Linux, including an OpenOffice, GIMP and thousends more will cost around 1.200 Euro and will have a power consumption of around 250W.

This stable Linux workstation will have a very good and stable browser and mailclient, a firewall, a stable OpenOffice and others more and will not have a coded graphical bus, not a coded HD drive, no stupid DRM registration every day (if you don't do that you can't work with your ready paid Office!), you can change any broken Hardware in your system and so on!

Nothing about W98, W2K and XP, I like that ready patch'd without MS-Explorer, IE, Outlook, XP-Firewall on an Office and CAD workstations, but an completely after installation coded VISTA with online DRM registration (every day!) a coded bus system and coded HD drive is for every company a holy mess!

I can understand Microsoft and the problem of software piracy, but if Microsoft and the Hardware industrie has made instead of DRM for VISTA an really more intelligent RFID Registration Key (or other systems!) as Sticker with maybe four RFID's in a row with 4 different big coded key's over 2.000 bit (together over 8.000 Bit) inside and a small RFID receiverbox (4 RFID channel's, each receiver (one slot in the back) an square inch or smaler with a range of maybe 5mm!) behind a 4.096 bit (or higher!) coded line to the a special RFID registration readercard (USB, PCI or PCI-e) so that every user has to put her registration sticker on this small receiver and has from now on a ready registered VISTA and can change MOBO, HDD and so on, that would be much better!

One RFID VISTA key works only on one VISTA CD who has the same individual "negative" coded ID and that means no trubble for the users and a bit more work for Microsoft and the Hardware industrie!

By the way: You can fix one RFID Key to one VISTA CD, but it is much cheaper for the indutrie if you press 50.000.000 VISTA's for 25.000.000 Dollar on CD who are all the same and have only a different RegKey sticker for 0,1 Cent on case and control this DRM Registration mess of an MS DRM Server over the internet!)

VISTA is stupid, exspencive (software, new hardware and power consumption!) and dangerous (DRM registration every day if you have an ready MS DRM Server online!!!!!) for every Office!

Nobody in a company needs really so an expensive 3D desktop on a big office workstation! Those normaly small workstations (Intel or AMD with 1Ghz, 512MB and a small AGP or an Onboard graphic) have to work stable without any rubbish and that you can have with W98, W2K, XP, LINUX, Mac OS with AppleWorks, StarOffice and other great Offices under 100 Euro more!

Best regards

Frank-J. Bebber,

Subject: Do you have VIsta? I do...

I'll keep this as short as I can...no promises though.

I have Vista. It runs great. It DOES use a bit more memory(about twice that of XP SP2)...but about half of that is shared system memory that is matched to the video ram on my card...Translation...I can run games at much better specs without p urchasing a new video card. Now, it's not the same performance I would get by upgrading the card sure...but then again, I'm only paying for a cheap memory upgrade on my system, not a freakishly expensive video card replacement.

The vast majority of the rest of the increase goes to indexing and making available files anywhere on my system of about 350Gb of data…AND whatever is in my Outlook 2007 mailboxes, almost instantly available.

For example, I can hit the Windows key, shift tab up and type “inquirer” and if there was an email or a file that contained said word, in a matter of seconds (usually around 2 or 3 for me) It pulls them up…I can hit Enter at that point and open the top one or tab through them and hit enter to open it…VERY handy!

Oh, yeah...DRM can be irritating...that's why I turned it off! Imagine that, you can just tu rn it off if you don't like it. Of course, to know how to do that you'd actually have to have some experience with the OS and a modicum of intelligence...like how to use the built in Help and Support feature(which is of course fully searchable)...more than you'd know from say putting together multiple complaints from across the internet with no real understanding of the OS on a functional level.

OR, you can write an overly technical hate later and get it on the Inquirer...

Hmm...

Try it before you knock it. Then, if you can't figure something out, ask for help. It's not rocket surgery you know. AND, unlike UBUNTU (which seems to be the Linux distro of current unrealistic hype. there's always at least one) I can load it up with my ATI video card and not be required to do anything. Like say, spending ours of researching online for a couple of cryptic lines of code and several strange and VERY different instruction sets from "gurus"...to have it still load up to a black screen.…hmmm…imagine that…it just works.

And you know what, I bet Dr.Whosit's is one of the same people that were complaining about Microsoft needing to make a more secure product...They did a pretty good job this time. Better than he was hoping for I guess...Sounds like he got burnt trying to pirate something and decided he'd spew some venom about MS because hey, let's be fair...they're the biggest kid on the block and the easiest target.

God, I'm so sick of people hating in ignorance and feigning knowledge. The stuff works, and it works well. People's memories seem to fade awful quickly. The same complaints about increased system requirement were voiced ad nausea when XP was released as well...and now it's piti able looking back. If you're trying to run the latest and greatest, full fledged OS (Mac's OS X is nice too for a trumped up Linux distro) on yester years bargain boxes...well, sorry but you're a tool. End of discussion.

Thanks,
Jason Weiand

Subject: no subject

i have ogo ct12 is possible to download are software from ogo? on internet?

i wont the software wear i can comunication pc to ogo and ogo to pc? please send my the link wear i can downloadare software

emm

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