I am a Linux user, and I have wrecked laptops with it before. It is easy to overheat or otherwise abuse a laptop by having improper configs.
For example, I had a battery become unusable because Linux often failed to sleep when the lid was closed because some dialog box was blocking. It would run in the bag with no ventilation when I didn't realize it until the battery drained and it would fail to shutdown until the hardware fail-safes took over and I realized my backpack was too hot to hold. Did this a few times and the last time, the battery wouldn't charge anymore. After getting a new battery I became very conscientious about whether it actually was asleep before I put it in the bag.
I have had this happen in Windows before as well, in one case it would wake up if I forgot to turn off my Bluetooth mouse when I put it away. Since it was already closed, there was no trigger to go back to sleep so it would run itself dead in the bag and eventually the plastic near a hot component melted. Turns out there is an option in the Windows device manager to tell it not to wake on Bluetooth that prevents this.
However a defect in the factory-installed operating system that causes failure is something you have to warranty. A defect in the user-installed operating system is not. However, I have no idea how they could trace the problem to the operating system. Not sure how they would ever know that Linux is installed. Any good Linux user would wipe the hard disk before returning a computer to the manufacturer for repair :)
This is an important point. It used to be that there really wasn't a whole lot of damage you could do to a machine with software, sure there was the 'set the monitor horizontal refresh to zero and burn up the flyback transistor' but that was about it. These days however, in an age of tightly managing clock speeds, heat, voltages, etc all under BIOS/driver control to maximize battery life, it is possible to not only damage but to completely brick a machine if it has either broken or malicious software running in 'ring 0'. And that puts people like NewEgg in a tight spot, having already to deal pretty evil stuff [1].
Then if you combine that with there is no way to 'restore' a laptop to its original OS install if you've re-partitioned and overwritten the 'recovery partition' on the hard drive. Nobody bothers to send recovery CDs any more, that is $3.85 in plastic they can't (or won't) put into the box. So now if you install Linux you've made it effectively impossible for the vendor to even attempt to start from a 'known good OS' and determine suitability. It does kinda suck.
That said, I prefer Amazon's policy as well and as more folks move there NewEgg will either adapt or die.
[1] Evil doer activity (documented) - get some bad memory (generally for free from some scrap pile, 'buy' a laptop, take its good memory out, put dead memory in, 'return' the laptop. Sad really. All the engineering effort that goes into thwarting the petty schemes of evil people.
I am a Linux user for years now, and I have never even come close to wrecking anything with it with 'improper configs' or otherwise, on a laptop or desktop.
The problem you describe is not a matter of an 'improper config' wrecking a laptop due to the awful user-unfriendliness of Linux. It is a matter of you messing with something you didn't understand, jamming the machine in a bag to overheat, and then having to replace the battery.
There does not exist an operating system which is impervious to this kind of nonsense.
She should contact Lenovo directly. I've fried my Lenovo T61 with overclocking and they still repaired it immediately. Additionally, they expressly stated to REMOVE THE HDD. This is obviously a cop out by Newegg, since any technician worth his salt could just run hardware diagnostics on it. According to the buyer, she did that AND booted a normal Windows and the errors persisted.
Didn't we just have an article about how great Amazons UX is? Well, i guess this is the Newegg version of that, just inverted.
Something that also happens often is that Linux has problems sending the hard drive to sleep properly and you end up with a "I'll stop and start it 3 times a minute" scenario which is able to wreck a HDD pretty quickly compared to normal usage
A bit of a tangent but this is one of the top reasons I buy Apple laptops. Sleep/Wake is pretty much flawless. I occasionally had some hangs on wake back in Tiger or earlier versions of Mac OS, but never with Leopard or later.
I'm also a long-time Linux user and while I have seen Linux destroy hardware (X11 was misconfigured and fried an LCD back in the day), it is certainly not common and pretty difficult to do these days. I don't think the risk is high enough to justify voiding the hardware warranties completely.
I've seen that happen with windows as well. Opened program wants to close, but needs to save or some such, laptop overheats. Sometimes it's just a lesson learned, I wouldn't say it was Linux that wrecked the laptops though.
I do find it interesting that newegg isn't using a CD loaded testing suite anyways, using windows PE or a DOS based environment. (like Eurosoft's PC-Check software.)
There's also the fact that it should take about, ten to fifteen minutes just to slip the hard drive out, hook it to an imaging workstation, and image the default OS over to it. (My imaging station takes 5 - 10 minutes). To the best of my understanding it's pretty much assumed that when you send stuff in you are waiving your right to have the same data sent back anyways.
I have had this happen when I was running a XP mode virtual machine in a Windows 7 laptop. The Virtual Machine prevented the main OS from going to sleep.
It was surprising my backpack didn't catch on fire.
I am not to familiar with credit cards and their fraud or return policies. Why exactly is it easier to refute charges with a credit card, more so than a debt card?
I'm a big fan of newegg and hope they continue to bring competition to amazon. I am hoping this is just a small oversight and it will be corrected shortly.
I stopped being their fan when their return policies changed. Now there is something called "Restocking fee" and I have to pay for shipping?? I don't think so.
I use Newegg to research products but once I find what I am looking for, I search for the model on Amazon and end up purchasing there, knowing return policy is much better for customers.
What gets me is "system cannot be resold as received" - I mean, sure, a customer should wipe their data off the disk... but would NewEgg really ship a system to a new customer without doing a fresh install of the OS if it was running Windows?
I always wonder wether an incorrectly configured ubuntu kernel or drivers could actually damage modern computers. I remember viruses from the 80's that supposedly could kill the machine by asking the bios to increase and decrease voltages or hdd spin in such a way it would deal physical damages to the machine. Might have been a computer legend though.
Note: When returning laptop, desktop, smartphone or anything I always tend to be anal retentive and put everything back in place, including software and OS so there are no arguing wether the problem is software or hardware (obviously I only need to send back hardware defective devices).
Tangential to this story but anecdotally I've been hearing of lots of situations recently where newish laptops have had screen problems soon after purchase and the brands involved have varied (ASUS, Lenovo, Acer, etc). And by "screen problems", I mean electrical ones either with the panel itself or with the controller, resulting most often in parts of the screen or the entire screen dancing towards full white.
I wonder if there is some shared panel manufacturer who has been dropping the ball lately?
I had a really bad experience in the past with Newegg and their lower levels of customer service. At one point I documented and blogged it, but that blog is no longer up unfortunately.
Anyway, the good news is that once I got in touch with someone higher up the chain they were like, "That never should have happened" and worked to make it right. It just took a ton of kicking and screaming to get there, which really wasn't worth it on my part, but in the end, they did the right thing.
One thing I'm seeing more and more is that companies are holding back their lower tier support employees from actually being helpful. For example, have you ever had one of those "Instant Online Chat Support" things help you out? No, they are always so unempowered its not even funny.
I've used an "Instant Online Chat Support" for TurboTax (answering questions) and at my auto repair company (to schedule appointments). Worked fine for me. When done well, it can be vastly superior to phoning in. But like you said... the people on the other side need to be empowered.
I used the online chat support for an Asus laptop whose monitor went out after a few months. I kept asking if this was a human or a machine because it felt incredibly automated. But in the end, it was very helpful and I got the information I needed to ship the laptop on their dime and got the laptop back a week or two later and things were great.
I've used Typefrag's livechat feature and it was very useful for finding out information about why my ventrilo server was down and when it'd be back up. Which is what instant connection services are for in my opinion, contacting to ask questions and get answer immediately not to get things sorted at a level that would require any sort of changes.
I have had bad customer service from NewEgg in the past I'm not surprised by this. Now I buy almost everything off Amazon and only go to Newegg for stuff that can't be DOA (cables and such)
Note that the NewEgg's refusal is based on the original OS being missing rather than a new OS being installed according to that email. My guess is that the user formatted the HD before installing Linux. Most OEM PCs now come with a recovery partition which is used to perform a factory reset. If the user erased this partition, then NewEgg would be unable to reset the device to its initial state for testing. It would be similar to the user returning the device by not returning important CDs.
Agreed. Surprising response from Newegg - we've had no problem returning machines that were defective here at work. Filing a chargeback appears to be the best solution in this case.
True, and it just goes to show you need to treat ALL of your customers with respect because you never know who are the ones who can Hurt or Help your business.
NewEgg has really lost their way over the past 2 or 3 years. I have gone from don't even check anywhere else to checking NewEgg last. Amazon almost always beats them on price now.
My thought exactly. I'm kinda curious as to what harm linux floffin off can do. Don't get me wrong, I still use and love Linux, but there is always a problem with linux, so far it's always in software/doesn't affect hardware, but I guess it's possible to do damage to the hardware?
I have had HP India refuse servicing my laptop (its speakers went kaput) because I had VLC installed. According to them, greater than 100% sound amplification in VLC was to blame.
This is NewEgg's chance to either gain or lose 1% of its customer base. Since margins are so tight on computers, and NewEgg costs for software support will decline, isn't this a no-brainer from a business perspective?
I think their customer base of people who use Linux, might want to use Linux, or who are just plain disgusted by this behaviour is way way more than 1%.
Remember that the people who will be upset by this (techies) are the same ones who put NewEgg on the map to start with.
Newegg used to be awesome - I have spent thousands in the last 6 years with them, but their customer service is terrible. Their customer service pretty much reads a script and keep repeating the same thing.
I think all companies have a life cycle:
1. New company, so customer is treated well/
2. Company grows and becomes successful
3. Company needs to show ever increasing profits. Starts taking shortcuts to save money, and starts to ignore what made them great in the first place.
I now try to buy all my electronics at Amazon instead of NewEgg or TigerDirect due to the poor return policies at Newegg and TigerDirect with DOA items. NewEgg used to be better than it is now but they have gone downhill in the past two years. TigerDirect has always had poor return policies.
The policy quoted states you can't return it even if it is opened.
"The following conditions are not acceptable for return, and will result in the merchandise being returned to you: Any desktop PC, notebook or tablet PC that has been opened"
[+] [-] singlow|13 years ago|reply
For example, I had a battery become unusable because Linux often failed to sleep when the lid was closed because some dialog box was blocking. It would run in the bag with no ventilation when I didn't realize it until the battery drained and it would fail to shutdown until the hardware fail-safes took over and I realized my backpack was too hot to hold. Did this a few times and the last time, the battery wouldn't charge anymore. After getting a new battery I became very conscientious about whether it actually was asleep before I put it in the bag.
I have had this happen in Windows before as well, in one case it would wake up if I forgot to turn off my Bluetooth mouse when I put it away. Since it was already closed, there was no trigger to go back to sleep so it would run itself dead in the bag and eventually the plastic near a hot component melted. Turns out there is an option in the Windows device manager to tell it not to wake on Bluetooth that prevents this.
However a defect in the factory-installed operating system that causes failure is something you have to warranty. A defect in the user-installed operating system is not. However, I have no idea how they could trace the problem to the operating system. Not sure how they would ever know that Linux is installed. Any good Linux user would wipe the hard disk before returning a computer to the manufacturer for repair :)
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Then if you combine that with there is no way to 'restore' a laptop to its original OS install if you've re-partitioned and overwritten the 'recovery partition' on the hard drive. Nobody bothers to send recovery CDs any more, that is $3.85 in plastic they can't (or won't) put into the box. So now if you install Linux you've made it effectively impossible for the vendor to even attempt to start from a 'known good OS' and determine suitability. It does kinda suck.
That said, I prefer Amazon's policy as well and as more folks move there NewEgg will either adapt or die.
[1] Evil doer activity (documented) - get some bad memory (generally for free from some scrap pile, 'buy' a laptop, take its good memory out, put dead memory in, 'return' the laptop. Sad really. All the engineering effort that goes into thwarting the petty schemes of evil people.
[+] [-] slurgfest|13 years ago|reply
The problem you describe is not a matter of an 'improper config' wrecking a laptop due to the awful user-unfriendliness of Linux. It is a matter of you messing with something you didn't understand, jamming the machine in a bag to overheat, and then having to replace the battery.
There does not exist an operating system which is impervious to this kind of nonsense.
[+] [-] LinXitoW|13 years ago|reply
Didn't we just have an article about how great Amazons UX is? Well, i guess this is the Newegg version of that, just inverted.
[+] [-] raphman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb2k_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeremyarussell|13 years ago|reply
I do find it interesting that newegg isn't using a CD loaded testing suite anyways, using windows PE or a DOS based environment. (like Eurosoft's PC-Check software.)
There's also the fact that it should take about, ten to fifteen minutes just to slip the hard drive out, hook it to an imaging workstation, and image the default OS over to it. (My imaging station takes 5 - 10 minutes). To the best of my understanding it's pretty much assumed that when you send stuff in you are waiving your right to have the same data sent back anyways.
[+] [-] reddit_clone|13 years ago|reply
It was surprising my backpack didn't catch on fire.
[+] [-] wissler|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jemfinch|13 years ago|reply
This is precisely why you should always pay with a credit card online.
[+] [-] ZanderEarth32|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtchang|13 years ago|reply
I'm a big fan of newegg and hope they continue to bring competition to amazon. I am hoping this is just a small oversight and it will be corrected shortly.
[+] [-] joering2|13 years ago|reply
I use Newegg to research products but once I find what I am looking for, I search for the model on Amazon and end up purchasing there, knowing return policy is much better for customers.
[+] [-] dllthomas|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobiscus|13 years ago|reply
I am not a Dave.
[+] [-] dbingham|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sciurus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RegEx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnchristopher|13 years ago|reply
Note: When returning laptop, desktop, smartphone or anything I always tend to be anal retentive and put everything back in place, including software and OS so there are no arguing wether the problem is software or hardware (obviously I only need to send back hardware defective devices).
[+] [-] georgemcbay|13 years ago|reply
I wonder if there is some shared panel manufacturer who has been dropping the ball lately?
[+] [-] Yarnage|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tibbon|13 years ago|reply
Anyway, the good news is that once I got in touch with someone higher up the chain they were like, "That never should have happened" and worked to make it right. It just took a ton of kicking and screaming to get there, which really wasn't worth it on my part, but in the end, they did the right thing.
One thing I'm seeing more and more is that companies are holding back their lower tier support employees from actually being helpful. For example, have you ever had one of those "Instant Online Chat Support" things help you out? No, they are always so unempowered its not even funny.
[+] [-] beambot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebigshane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lockyy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenrikm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sciurus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsr_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigmaxipi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] systematical|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowrydin9|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenrikm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motoford|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ImprovedSilence|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrrazdan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lysol|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yarnage|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbitingpluto|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motoford|13 years ago|reply
Remember that the people who will be upset by this (techies) are the same ones who put NewEgg on the map to start with.
[+] [-] bhudman|13 years ago|reply
I think all companies have a life cycle: 1. New company, so customer is treated well/ 2. Company grows and becomes successful 3. Company needs to show ever increasing profits. Starts taking shortcuts to save money, and starts to ignore what made them great in the first place.
[+] [-] uslic001|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zyce|13 years ago|reply
"The following conditions are not acceptable for return, and will result in the merchandise being returned to you: Any desktop PC, notebook or tablet PC that has been opened"
[+] [-] mayneack|13 years ago|reply
http://consumerist.com/2012/06/newegg-no-well-totally-take-r...