Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mandrill!hal!ncoast!btb
From: btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Atari warranty estimates are EXTREMELY accurate
Message-ID: <7772@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: 14 May 88 13:53:22 GMT
References: <19880504130143.5.CRAWLEY@FLIGHTLESS-WATERFOWL.SCRC.Symbolics.COM> <988@xn.LL.MIT.EDU> <5157@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko)
Distribution: na
Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh
Lines: 43

In article <5157@cup.portal.com> DaveFlory@cup.portal.com writes:
>> thought I should share it and possibly warn others.]
>> Exactly 92 days after purchasing my SH204 hard disk, it failed to spin
>> up.   Of course, the 90 day Atari warranty had just expired along with
>
>Just curious, did you try contacting the dealer, or Atari? I have heard
>a lot of just out of warrantee stuff being replaced while in the vicinity
>of customer service.

my original mouse went bad on me at about 4 months... i noticed that it was
"made in taiwan"... i ordered another through the mail from B&C on the 
west coast... it is "made in japan", and is much better made (i opened
both of them up.)  i also wrote to atari to complain, and they DID send me
a replacement mouse (no questions asked), but it is also "made in taiwan",
and has some of the same symptoms that my original mouse had before it
failed (not moving the pointer the direction that you move the mouse!)

when i was in college, i took a statistics course, and, as with other courses,
i learned much about the real world through the homework problems... one of
them was about "memoryless" distributions, and what i "learned" from that
problem was that solid state electronics have "memoryless" failure
distributions, which means that if they don't fail within the first 90 days,
they won't fail under normal conditions (statistically speaking, of course).
i have always taken this as a comfortable justification for the 90 day 
warranties that we get in consumer electronics products, BUT...

there's more than solid state electronics in a hard disk drive... there
are electromechanical mechanisms, not to mention the "industrial" abuse
factor like IBM builds into their equipment (or used to)... you might
be able to drop a PC on the floor and it would still work (not the hard
disk, probably, though)... try that with an ST  (I still love my ST!)

(and treat it gently)


-- 
			Brad Banko
			Columbus, Ohio
			(formerly ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb)
			btb%ncoast@mandrill.cwru.edu

"The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man."
			-- Carl Jung, 1875-1961