[ubuntu-uk] My dead 'Linux Certified' machine

[Rob Beard]

Sean Miller wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Rowan<rowan.berkeley at googlemail.com> wrote:
>   
>> So I have dropped them an email asking if I can bring it in for repair.
>>     
>
> Sounds like a good move!
>
> Be sure to feed back to here what it turns out to be...
>
> These LinuxCertified people don't sound particularly helpful, btw.
>
> If they're in the States (as I assume they are?) then perhaps they're
> not bound by UK and European law and they can sell laptops that die
> weeks after being delivered and then say to the "victim" that it's
> nothing to do with them?
>
> Sounds very poor practice to me.
>
> Have you thought about writing to the Linux Foundation alerting them
> to how the "Linux" brand is being used?  Who knows... Linus might even
> turn up to fix it for you...
>
> Sean
>   
It's certainly worth a try getting in touch with them.  As far as I know 
Linux is a trademark of the Linux Foundation and I would assume they 
don't like the trademark being brought into disrepute.

I'm sorry to hear about the problems with your laptop, I guess part of 
the risk of buying from abroad is the warranty.  I know some laptop 
manufacturers (generally the big ones such as Toshiba) will repair the 
machine worldwide (not sure if that is standard in their warranty or if 
you have to pay extra for that peace of mind) but others will just 
support the machine from the region it was bought in (I believe Acer are 
like this, they will only honour warranties on machines bought in Europe 
if they are dealt with in Europe).

Hopefully anyway you'll get a good outcome.  I'll keep my fingers 
crossed for you, although in future I guess it might pay to buy a 
machine in the UK from a UK based supplier (be it a Linux specialist 
such as EfficientPC.co.uk or LinuxEmportium.co.uk or just a Windows 
based laptop from Comet or somewhere and install Linux yourself).

Rob