This one makes me mad...

It's not Linux related in the least, but is computer related and
involves a local computer store...

A customer of mine bought a new-to-them refurbished computer about 2
years ago. I hadn't seen this computer until today. It had a couple of
really minor software issues that I solved. But... (and Dylan can back
me up on this) I noticed right away that something was strange. It is
an Athlon XP2800 machine, but it was painfully slow booting Windows XP.
I checked, and Windows was reporting 192MB of RAM. (64 were reserved
for the onboard video.) I pulled the cover off to see if maybe a second
DIMM was unseated or something. It only has one 256MB DDR DIMM and I
also recognized it had a Fujitsu hard drive. For those not in the know,
Fujitsu hasn't made 3.5" IDE hard drives for maybe 5 or 6 years now. I
checked, and the machine has a 10GB Fujitsu HD. This all seemed a bit
strange for a 2 year old computer. I mentioned this to my client. She
was _sure_ the machine had 512MB of RAM. She was also sure she hadn't
been told it was a used or refurbished machine. She found the invoice
and, sure enough, it said Athlon XP2800, 512MB, 120GB. (and no mention
of being refurbished.) They took the computer in to Computer Trends,
where they bought it, and complained. The guy there told them there is
no way it would have shipped that way, and that someone who serviced it
must have replaced those parts. They claim I am the only person who has
serviced the machine. I asked the guy at Computer Trends if he was
accusing me of stealing a 120GB IDE drive and 256MB of DDR. He stopped
short of actually accusing me, but told me to "draw my own conclusions."

My conclusion: (and I'm happy that this will be stored on the SLG
archive forever) Don't buy anything from Computer Trends!

(Oh, and please, friends don't let friends buy refurbished e-Machines.)

Thank you for reading. I feel a little bit better now.

ttyl
srw
Received on Tue Feb 6 18:12:20 2007