[ale] beware warranties on refurbished/reconditioned computers

[Richard Bronosky]

Have you noticed a pattern that might suggest if the BIOS gets
effected at the point of [a] needing a hard power down, [b] doing a
hard power down, or [c] rebooting after a hard power down. If it is
"case a" then you can't avoid it. If it is b or c, you can by
remembering to remove USB devices.

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Brian MacLeod<nym.bnm at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Richard Bronosky <Richard at bronosky.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Six months ago my dad bought a "reconditioned" Acer Aspire A150 from
>> Tiger Direct. Yesterday he called me offering to send it to me to be
>> used as spare parts because tech support told him it sounded like a
>> bad system board. I told him surely a refurb comes with the full
>> original warranty. After all, you are buying a product that has been
>> returned and has a far greater likelihood of being defective. Well, it
>> turns out they they are sold with diminutive 3 month warranty! I would
>> have never dreamed they would do this. You are not saving very much
>> money. (From what I saw tonight the refurb is the same price as the
>> new model.) However, you are giving up a 12 month warranty.
>>
>> The bad news is that I talked him through flashing the BIOS (which
>> tech support also tried to talk him through, but failed to tell him to
>> rename the firmware image to ZG5IA32.FD, so it failed) and the
>> computer is now back to its Ubuntu-tastic glory. "Bad news?" you ask.
>> Yes, if I would have kept my mouth shut I would be replacing my wife's
>> 12 inch PowerBook with it!
>
>
> Yeah, this is the one bad aspect of the Acer Aspire Ones -- I seem to have
> it happen when I leave a USB drive plugged it during a hard power down.  For
> some reason, it causes the BIOS to freak.  Fortunately, I know this and have
> on my stash of USB drives the newest firmware set up to do the flash
> required to get it out of its funk.  Inconvenient, but relatively easy to
> recover from.
>
> bnm
>
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.!# RichardBronosky #!.