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Part 1
It took me two weeks to write this.
Well, it didn't take me two weeks of sitting at a computer to write this. After Comdex Vegas, I was so behind in everything not getting done in my absence that it took two weeks to get caught up to the point where I could sit down and fire off a new Guru's World column.
Even then, and the fact that it's a Sunday, it still doesn't mean that I'm not overly busy. It's 10 PM and I just came back from work. They switched accounting software at my work and for some reason; it failed to operate properly on anybody's Windows 98 machine. They opened up a bunch of new hard drives, swapped out everyone's drive and installed 2000 on everyone's machine. It just so happened that the only PC in the tech room that functioned properly after the install of 2000 was mine. I just popped in the office to download all of the important stuff off of my old drive (MP3s, JPEGs and AVIs. You know; important stuff) and knock out a few e-mails as well as get the ELO Zoom desktop and screensaver installed back on the PC. I wanted to make sure that if I'm the only one up and running in the tech room on Monday morning, that it's business as usual as far as I'm concerned.
It's been a while since I've written any Guru's Worlds about my frustrations with the common customer. The customers haven't changed. They're still trying to squeak there way out of every loophole that will allow them to run an Athlon CPU without a heatsink and get a refund for it when it's dead. They're still arguing with me about their AGP 4X video card being 3.3V and that why they fried their D850 board (AGP 4X cards are 1.5V. 2X cards are 3.3V). I just think I've become more immune to their outlandishness.
Matter of fact, just this evening, I received an email from a guy whose Athlon CPU warranty was refused because every corner of the die had a chip taken out of it. He told me that the refusal to do the RMA for his "dead CPU" was poppycock (his words) because we had been discussing his no POST situation since before September 11 and that it took him a long time after September 11 because of some personal repercussions the events of 9/11/2001 had on his personal life. I merely stated to the gentleman that "the events of 9/11 have effected all of us in many ways, but regardless of time frame or events that develop in the interim, the CPU could have been returned to us 10 months down the road and our ability to do a warranty would still be limited, not due to time frame but, because of the condition of the CPU." Not to sound callous, but I've heard all of the excuses and the fact of the matter is, if you bounce your heatsink on top of your CPU, like a 5 year old playing jacks, and you take a few indentations out of the product while you're at it, I'm not going to warranty it. I was actually somewhat offended that he was trying to use September 11th as an excuse for not being more timely with his RMA. Poppycock!
>> Part 2
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