Compaq sued over restore partition!

[Crashman]

<A HREF="http://www.compaqqrsettlement.com/email.htm" target="_new">Ah-Ha! Read!</A>

It's about time somebody did something about this. Compaq puts the restore partition on the drive itself without supply restore CDs on some models. I know from experience that if your drive fails, they CHARGE YOU for restore partion CD's!

Someone should now sue them for putting the BIOS GUI on the hard drives!

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Heh heh. That's funny. Poor Compaq. (Not!)

<font color=blue><pre>I'm proud to be an American,
who served my country in the US Air Force,
to protect the rights of my fellow Americans,
to hold protests against others like me.</pre><p></font color=blue>

 

[bum_jcrules]

Finally!


I have had many a headache with that stupid little partition. They have been doing that for a long time now.


Yes! Muhhhahhaaaahhaa!







<A HREF="http://www.millionmanlan.com/MMLDefault.asp" target="_new">Million Man LAN 2 is June 25-29, 2003 in Louisville Kentucky... Be there!</A>

 

[jihiggs]

thank god, hopefully they will stop doing that. i hate it! of course i rarely have to work with a comcrap, but thats the reason i use dell servers.
please note i said dell SERVERS not workstations lol.

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!

 

[AMD_me]

All people check out <A HREF="http://www.compaqsucks.com" target="_new">http://www.compaqsucks.com</A>

eBay, kick ass!

My 3DMark2001 Score: <A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104</A>
-
I bought from Best Buy once. Once.

 

[AMD_me]

My new 3DMark2001 Score link is <A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6288493" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6288493</A>

eBay, kick ass!

My 3DMark2001 Score: <A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6288493" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6288493</A>
-
I bought from Best Buy once. Once.

 

[FUGGER]

What is up with the fake Oppainter listing.

Oppainter is the captain of the XS team and you have no right to put his name on your lame 3Dmark score. Also the nature score is hacked or bugged. NFW you scored that high in nature when the 3Ghz AMD's or 4Ghz P4 can barely break 150FPS.

Plus the real Oppainters machine is 22k+

Change it and I will refrain from trolling your posts.

<b>"Granted I dont own a P4. But I read enough stuff and waste enough time on forums newsgroups IRC and computer news sites that I proberly know more then if I DID own a P4." -vk2amv</b>

 

[TKH]

When I was working in Compaq I received plenty of furious customers complaining about this. And the answer from Compaq directly is: "...in the user manual we indicate that you should burn a recovery CD yourself if you want to do the system recovery..." but the f**king problem is most of the computers they sold (in my region) didn't come with a CDRW. They deserved to be sued.

You never know how stupid you are until you have done something stupid enough for you to realize it.
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22996" target="_new">My System Rig</A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TKH on 04/16/03 10:37 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

So basically Compaq says "Burn the fugger yourself, and if you were too cheap a fugger to buy a burner to begin with, fug you!"

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[bikeman]

Come on ... This is ridiculous ...

I for myself own a Compaq. An old one, I admit. Yes, it also has the BIOS-partition on it's first HD. Ow my god! I lose 30 MB of my 2 GB harddisk! That's a smacking whole one and a half percent! Make those 30 MB stand on a modern HD and they aren't but 1/1000 or less of your HD capacity ... Why bother?

With the recovery partition, you might be a little more right. If a one gigabyte partition is reserved for it on a 40 GB HD, it still is only a mere 2,5 %. But actually, why sue them for that? They din't lie to you, do they? You pay for a 20 GB HD, for example, and you get one, don't you? If you're not pleased with that partition there, delete it, and you 've got what you pay for ... Or is it the fact that they deliver you software on HD, and not on a CD why they are sueing? Then, I guess, many, many computer manufacturers would have to be sued, as I guess there always is software installed without you getting a CD of it.

Hmmm ... I guess I'll have to refer to my signature again, just to be sure ...

Greetz,
Bikeman

<i>Then again, that's just my opinion</i>

 

[TKH]

Refer to my last post you'll see why. It is even more ridiculous to sell a system without the recovery CD in such company. How do you gonna tell your customer that "my system needs a recovery CD to re-install the pre-install OS and software, but you have to burn your own copy. What? your system doesn't have a CDRW, then buy one you stupid... oh, you want our technician to do it for you, well software problem is not covered under warranty so we gonna charge you and that ain't gonna be cheap." And believe it, this is how the Compaq answer to its customer, and as a saleman/technician I don't have the choice but to say the same thing.

You never know how stupid you are until you have done something stupid enough for you to realize it.
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22996" target="_new">My System Rig</A>

 

[bikeman]

Maybe a more precise formulation of my question around this is necessary:

What law do they break?

Ok, it is not a nice thing to do, but it will take those lawyers a lot of effort to convince me that Compaq did commit a crime of some sort ... If I were to follow this thing, of course (which I won't, for the record ...)

Greetz,
Bikeman

<i>Then again, that's just my opinion</i>

 

[4Ryan6]

Crash I see theres some opposition here, but I thoroughly agree with you, and just because some lucky ones have had no problems yet, doesn't mean they won't, but then they'll be singing a different tune.

<b><font color=purple>Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.</font color=purple></b>

 

[TKH]

Sometimes a law suit doesn't neccesary mean violating the law or regulation. Remember those ppl who sued McDonald? What law did McDonald violated? McDonald got sued because a bunch of stupid fat guys who had increased risk of cardiovascular disease and they claimed that McDonald should have told them that eating at McDonald is not healthy.

You never know how stupid you are until you have done something stupid enough for you to realize it.
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22996" target="_new">My System Rig</A>

 

[AMD_me]

It is not a hacked or bugged score. Everything listed is 100% true. I forgot to remove the OPPAINTER when I posted on this forum.

eBay, kick ass!

My 3DMark2001 Score: <A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6288493" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6288493</A>
-
I bought from Best Buy once. Once.

 

[bytor]

Fugger, AMD_me's benchmark was run at 640x480x16, and 16 bit z-buffer depth. It makes sense that his nature score is so high because all the others are more or less cpu limited on high end systems and the resolution change doesn't affect them much. Hell, I score better at default settings (1024x768x32, 24 bit z) on all tests except nature.

 

[sturm]

Compaq/HP is now laying off 25% or more of the manufacturing employees so another compay(Foxconn) can come in and build the computer for less money than what Compaq can build them for. Which tells me that the Foxconn employees will be getting paid less than what we are right now. Were guessing around $7/hr. The killer is that Compaq had used Foxconn in the past to build them and dropped them because of quality issues. WTF! I get laid off so the big wigs can put more money in their pocket.
Granted I would NEVER buy a compaq. I know how they are built and what components are used in them. I saw a pcmark score from a 2.4ghz computer and it was way less than my 1.4 ghz computer. yes these are for business use but still it should be close to mine.
I just hope I get laid off and get the severance package. That way Crampaq can pay me to look for another job.

To everyone who doesnt build their own, NEVER BUY A COMPAQ OR HP COMPUTER!

 

[Crashman]

Actually, I'm completely right. You see, I never mentioned that it was a waste of space. So your arguement against me is completely wrong, there's actually a name for that logical fallacy, something about throwing a fish on the trail.

You see, the problem lies in the fact that sometimes DRIVES DIE! Ouch, you lost your BIOS partition. And Compaq's BIOS partition restore doesn't always work right.

Now, that was MY complaint. The one in the record concerns a restore partition. What happens if you loose that? I've gotten bad restore CD's from Compaq also! After spending 1/2 hour figuring out where to order it from, paying $10 for shipping, waiting for it to arrive, and then 1/2 hour more in their forums to figure out a workaround for the installation bug, I had the system up! I charged the customer only $50, based on my $20 software installation fee.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[bikeman]

You got a point there. I really thought the thing I suggested was the reason why you were so happy about that law-suite (or however you spell that). But I can understand that a crashed HD could indeed cause a lot of trouble. Though for my system I found some disk-images to recover from such a losses on their website. But I guess the modern equivalent of those are the recovery CD's you had to order.

Also, Crash, watch my signature ... And I even referred to it explicitly. Though I might have to apologize for the quite rude formulation of my thoughts. But I went running right before I posted that post. I guess my adrenaline-levels hadn't normalized at that moment ...

Anyway, and that's not directed to Crashman, actually, I think that law-suite against McDonalds is ridiculous, too ... <i>(my sig really is written to my personality ...)</i>

Greetz,
Bikeman

<i>Then again, that's just my opinion</i>

 

[Tommunist]

When someone purchases software (in this case windows) are they not entitled to have a copy of it on a permanent medium (cd) without having to make the copy themselves? Is there any law about this?

"Don't question it!!!" - Err

 

[bum_jcrules]

Basically what I have done with drives going into a Compaq machine or if I wanted to clear of the partitions off the Compaq drive, I would first start with a a DOS boot. (DOS or use a Win Startup Disk.) Do a "A:Format c: /s" to get the system files on after the format. This normally eleviated all of the hassles. I haven't messed around with newer Compaqs because I steer as many people as possible away from Gateway and Compaq. I can't stand either one anymore. It has probably been 2 years since I meesed around with one.




<A HREF="http://www.millionmanlan.com/MMLDefault.asp" target="_new">Million Man LAN 2 is June 25-29, 2003 in Louisville Kentucky... Be there!</A>

 

[bum_jcrules]

This might shock you but I got one of the restore CDs for free. I don't know how but they sent it to me. It is one of the models listed in the suit too.




<A HREF="http://www.millionmanlan.com/MMLDefault.asp" target="_new">Million Man LAN 2 is June 25-29, 2003 in Louisville Kentucky... Be there!</A>

 

[Crashman]

Well, part of the settlement would be that all owners would be entitled to recovery CD's. Free. And if your hard drive fails completely, you need them. Now, I can understand how the guy who payed me $50 to do something he could have done himself had he the skill to navigate Compaqs website, or the recovery CD's, might want his $50 back.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

Yes, software licenses are a lifetime lease. This is how I can legally tell someone upgrading from an OEM system to a homebuilt system to use their OEM license on a new computer, even if they have to borrow a non-customized OEM cd from a friend. As long as they have removed that license from the original machine they have the right to use it on the new machine.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

Doh! They charged me a $10 service/handling charge per disk!

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>