I would hope QUALITY would already be factored into the price.
Câmon, you know as well as I do that warranty calls usually donât have anything to do with the quality after a certain point.If a company truly sold absolute shit, theyâd go out of business or turn it around.
I would say the driving costs of a 5 year warranty arenât even the replacement costs, itâs manning a warranty department that can handle the load. They become a second customer service department, which deals with CnC shops that left a PC under a grinding wheel for a year and a half and canât figure out why it doesnât work anymore and want their new machine.
I could buy the exact same hardware as someone in Europe for less. Because I wouldnât get a 5 year warranty I donât want.
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Ahem. Microsoft. Motorola. Nokia. Dell. eMachines. Dollar stores.
Plenty of companies sell shit. Itâs even common knowledge. But people buy it because itâs both cheap and expensive (although most get the two confused). Itâs better to buy a piece of shit today than buy something worth owning a year from now.
Partly because a year from now, the quality will be obsolete again and you can still brag about the piece of shit you bought today, because at least you have one.
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âFree market forcesâ only works if thereâs a free market.
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Sorry guys I didnât get a notification for this!
Yeah, the mandated 5 year warranty is free, although it has several odd loopholes and problems. It covers âhi-tech computer equipment such as personal computersâ but because of a lack of clarification or updates to the warranty law since⌠well itâs the EU, since forever, this doesnât cover things like mobile phones, because theyâre telephones, but does include smart TVs because of the French Minitel (and similar) pre-WWW internet machines. Go figure.
This is why most computer stores (especially PC World, oh how I hate them, I could write about them for hours and still youâd not understand my pain) will choose careful wording when you buy a computer, peripheral, or television; theyâll always offer you store insurance against the product, never a warranty.
(as a side note, I thought âwho the hell pays for warranties?â and Googled it. I wasnât aware that most of the world paid for them⌠here theyâre practically universally included in base price - before tax - whether youâre buying a washing machine, fairy lights, or a vehicle)
Typically Down Under, companies are legally obliged to provide a 7- or 14-day warranty with a product to protect the consumer against but manufacturers usually provide 12 months for most things (including PCs and phones) unless explicitly mentioned otherwise. I would assume that warranty is built into the cost of the product.
In New Zealand there is a thing called the âConsumer Guarantees Actâ. At its base is the rule that if something is sold then it has to be âfit for purposeâ. This encompasses quite a lot of things, including longevity.
If you would normally expect something to last about 5 years and it fails after 3 years then it is not fit for purpose and the store is legally obliged to fix it. This makes a complete mockery of the stores that sell âextended warrantiesâ of up to 2 years and is the reason I never buy them. Itâs also the reason I almost always buy from one of the larger chains, even if I have to pay a little bit extra than buying from the fly-by-night stores.
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As a household, we are down to having 2 PCs, both with Windows 8.1. Our lesser used older all-in-one touchscreen (Pentium with 4GB of RAM) became my express install Windows 10 testbed last night. Apparently I have 30 days to rollback to 8.1 for free so I gave it a shot. It took about 90 minutes to upgrade in all. I did get a kick out of the final message I before it was finally ready that said âthis is taking longer than anticipated, but weâre almost readyâ or something to that effect.
I didnât get much time after the install to poke around, but I already like 10 a lot more than I did 8.1. As a user with just enough knowledge to be dangerous and who complains about the âhelp deskâ at work, I found the new interface fairly intuitive to get around and use. Given some time, I may even like it more than I like Windows 7, which is what I use at work.
Iâll add some more thoughts as I get them in this thread. Iâll probably end up upgrading our budget-mid level gaming PC that the kids fight over sooner than later. Iâll have to get my son to cull his collection of recorded gaming footage first since those files are taking up slightly more than half the hard drive space.
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Well I bought a Surface last week that came with Windows 10 already installed. Of course when I got home, my laptop was finally ready to install as well. The upgrade for the laptop was very painless. Hit Next a couple times and sat back. It installed and upgraded with only one hitch so far. Wireless is not connecting. Itâs a very old laptop so I probably just need a driver for it. Iâm sure once I plug it into the network it will be fine.
Experience-wise, Iâm liking Windows 10 on the touch enabled tablet. Iâve been going back and forth using it as a tablet and as a laptop with a physical keyboard. So far everything is working well and it switches back and forth easily. I have of course turned all the annoyances off like the shared Updates and some other things. Downside is the integration of the Microsoft account. I use a local account but itâs constantly asking me to log in with my Microsoft account. I have for a few things like the Store but then running any app like Solitaire, it keeps asking if I want to sign in. No means no damn it! I havenât really used the Edge browser much as I need Chrome to grab my bookmarks and some extensions and havenât really gone back. But so far, no real complaints.
Mine still isnât ready to install for some reason. Which is troubling, as this laptop was brand new last October.
I, for one, have purchased warranties on about most of the electronics Iâve owned. Playstations, IPods, phones, etc. I typically purchase them from Squaretrade, which has been on the cheap side of warranties with excellent service when I need to call upon them and make a claim. Oh yeah, Iâve made claims. Several of them. Of the 7 warranties Iâve purchased with them, Iâve had to make claims on 4 of the products (excluding phones; those are a special breed, since my wife canât seem to keep from dropping her phone 
). Either I just keep picking the products that a companyâs QA missed upon review, or products are just getting shittier with the times. I donât take my chances anymore when purchasing anything that costs >$100.
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Nothing to add to the conversation, really, but every time I see the title I imagine a protest mob outside a MicroSoft store with signs reading âFree Windows 10!!!â. And one that says âJohn 3.16â.
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So I finally got notice that I could upgrade. I debated it for a few days before telling GWX to go ahead and start it.
The first time, the little Windows 10 splash box just closed. Nothing more.
The next time, the window stayed open and it said âdownload in processâ. Two hours later, it was still saying that. So I clicked on âshow progressâ. A Control Panel/Windows Update window opens⌠and I watch the download start. Seriously.
Iâm afraid to go any farther.
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It seemed to work perfectly well on my parents machines. Now the only thing thatâs wrong is that theyâre having to put up with the hideous uncoloured window bars. I mean whoâs idea was that?
Settings>Personalization>Colors>Show color on Start, taskbar, and action center>On
Oh I knew about that already (that solved half the screams of âIT LOOKS WRONG!â), but it doesnât seem to affect the title bars in the slightest, making windows seem like theyâre missing their top borders because of the sudden lack of coloured stripe after⌠umm⌠like, 28 years of coloured stripeâŚ
You can try this, but I will warn you that the results can be very unsatisfying.
You can pick colors like what you want under High Contrast. I didnât like the results at all.
I let my game box upgrade Friday. No glitches so far but Borderlands the Pre Sequel has a slight pause at the beginning of a level. I havenât tried any other games and I didnât update video drivers or software. Just ran cold.
Also, you can upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit Windows 10. You need to do a clean install once you upgrade. Then you just reinstall it as a 64 bit version.
Hereâs some help on disabling a bunch of the privacy holes in Windows 10. Be careful, some of the tools already released are actually full of adware and âfreeâ software.
Oh man I tried that yesterday on my motherâs laptop and nope. Nope nope. She can use the whiteness. And I thought that the high-contrast mode on MacOS Yosemite was nasty!