OT: Refurbished computers?

[Renegade 13]

You have bad bad BAD luck AT! My parents bought an HP over 2 years ago, and have had no difficulty whatsoever, except that the CD-RW died a couple months back. But from what I understand, RW drives have a lower mean time before failure than a purely reading drive. So it wasn't horribly unexpected, just inconvenient.

[Kamog]

I think the HP computers we had at work didn't last very long because of problems. But our Compaq PC's have had even more problems.

[Atrocities]

Once the bad drive was replaced I have had rather good luck with this machine. The bad luck was in the service catagory. In order to get good service now a days you need to know how to speak Farsee (sp) or Arabic.

[Will]

That would be Farsi. But I'm not aware of any large numbers of support staff that have been outsourced to Iran or the Middle East. A lot of the more conservative segments of the Persian and Arabic populations still don't take too kindly to capitalist American influence Most of it is India, and even then, knowing how to speak Hindi probably won't help. A lot of people in India technically speak the same language, but don't understand each other because the dialects have shifted so much. So the common language between them all is English (good old fashioned colonial influence). You still have to put some effort into understanding the accent, but I've found that thinking of the speech as someone trying to talk with their tongue outside of the mouth helps.

[dogscoff]

Will said:
But I'm not aware of any large numbers of support staff that have been outsourced to Iran or the Middle East. A lot of the more conservative segments of the Persian and Arabic populations still don't take too kindly to capitalist American influence

LOL!

Customer : Hi, I want to complain about this power supply I bought the other day.
Middle Eastern Call Centre Agent : You want to complain? I want to complain! I live in one of the most unstable and dangerous countries in the world! I mean the fundamentalists have guns, the Iranians have nukes and the Americans have Jesus. I just about crap my pants every time I open the newspaper.
Customer : Ummm, well, right. The thing is, when I switch it on...
Middle Eastern Call Centre Agent : I mean it's hardly our fault. Sure, we've done some crazy [censored], but what do you expect? For the last hundred and fifty years, we've had Western imperialists killing our people, plundering our natural resources, looting our cultural treasures, inciting religious and ethnic conflicts and meddling in our political autonomy to suit their own ends. It's hardly an environment conducive to the development of a secure and moderate socio-political landscape, is it?
Customer : Do you think if I took it back to the store they'd...
Middle Eastern Call Centre Agent : And then they have the nerve to call us terrorists! The bloody cheek! No wonder everyone's so pissed off all the time. And don't even get me started on the Israeli thing...
Customer : *klik* *dial tone*

**NOTE** The opinions of the middle eastern call centre agent do not necessarily reflect those of the author. Just a joke guys, no need for another flame war.

[Rasorow]

Ashamed to say it but I bought a Microcenter PC this last time instead of building (first time I didnt build since the 386) because of price. The system works great and was only $476. And I didnt go the discount road with the rebate and opening the store card. So if you want to go the store route then I would go that way. (though I will be building a custom PC when/if I get the money again)

Rasorow