wrote in message
My father in law purchased a PC from PC World for £700 in May 2004.
So a cheap, consumer PC, almost 3 years old.

It is now not working
Hardware or software?

what the defnition of a 'reasonable length of time'
However long the warentee period is / was. I'd guess 1 year in this case.

Is this defined anywhere
The whole PC industry, from operating systems to periferals, relies on
computers needing changing every 3 years or so. That's just how it works. If
they lasted for 5-6 years, it would break the economics of the R&D that goes
into making the PC you buy today as good as it gets.

does anyone have experience of how this has been defined in practice?

I have lots, doing technical support for a major computer manufacturor at a
corporate level, and have been working with PCs in one form or another for
over 15 years. Warranty periods are very carefully calculated risks.

Thanks

YW

"GB" wrote
The main question is a purely
practical one, namely does your father in law need any of the data on the
hard disk?

Is it the hard disk that has failed?

If so, you might find it better to take the PC to an expert repairer.

If you don't already have the expertise, how do you how to work out if a
repairer is an expert or not?

If your computer is a Dell or an HP (or etc.), ring their technical support
line, and get them to diagnose the fault. They will tell you what's wrong
with the PC and what part you need.

Without knowing what is wrong with the PC, nobody can advise you whether
you
have any case under the SOGA,

I can. You don't. You may have a case under the terms of the warranty, if
it's still applicable, but you don't have a case under the SOGA - MTBF
figures are generally publicly available, so you could work out that,
statistically, your father-in-law's PC is entirely within the norm for a
possible component failure.

Jez T wrote:
wrote in message
My father in law purchased a PC from PC World for £700 in May 2004.
So a cheap, consumer PC, almost 3 years old.

It is now not working
Hardware or software?

what the defnition of a 'reasonable length of time'
However long the warentee period is / was. I'd guess 1 year in this
case.

No , "reasonable" under the SOGA is entirely separate to warranty periods.

Is this defined anywhere
The whole PC industry, from operating systems to periferals, relies on
computers needing changing every 3 years or so. That's just how it
works. If they lasted for 5-6 years, it would break the economics of
the R&D that goes into making the PC you buy today as good as it gets.

I disagree. The industry relies on people thinking they need to upgrade
every few years to run the latest software and gadgets.

Decent quality PC hardware will work reliably for far longer than 3 years.
We've had a pile of PCs at work that must have been approaching 10 years old
that worked fine but were just obsolete.

PSUs get flaky and Hard Drives die but much of a PC will run forever if
looked after.

does anyone have experience of how this has been defined in practice?

I have lots, doing technical support for a major computer
manufacturor at a corporate level, and have been working with PCs in
one form or another for over 15 years. Warranty periods are very
carefully calculated risks.

Hmmmmmm

--
Alex

"I laugh in the face of danger. Then I hide until it goes away"

www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk

Thanks all, have tried the machine with a different power supply fitted
so it's definitely not something so simple as the fuse. Have also made
a backup of the hard drive. Will go and ask nicely and see if they can
do a diagnosis for me and I should be able to change the relevant bits.

IANAL, but from experience...

A lot of motherboard manufacturers started to use a cheap chinese
electrolyte in their capacitors a few years ago, and their formulation
was wrong - it caused bulging or leaking, typically in the large
capacitors around the processor socket, and would cause the machine to
fail.

My own machine started to get gradually less stable early last year, to
the point where it would randomly restart without warning in anything
from 2-30 minutes.

It had me baffled for a long time (I used to build them, and even I was
confused by the behaviour), but I noticed a single capacitor was very
slightly out of shape (they often have a "cross" stamped on top, and one
of mine was not quite as flat as the others by the reflection from it) -
all other hardware possibilities had been ruled out as far as possible,
from swapping the PSU, testing the memory, running from a bootable linux
CD to ensure it wasn't OS related etc.

I was called in to look at a colleagues' machine a couple of months ago
following a total failure to boot "out of the blue", and his machine
also had faulty (leaking in this instance) capacitors.

Take the side back off the machine and have a good look around the
processor socket (you're looking for the cylindrical things stood
upright off the main circuit board). If any of them show signs of a
brown substance (often around the top) or look like they're not
perfectly flat on top, get yourself a new PC - it won't be worth the
expense of replacing the motherboard in the old one unless you're up to
fiddling with it yourself, and even then, you're up against getting
everything working again, and possible hardware incompatibilities.

If you buy a new machine, you can simply put the old hard drive in an
external caddy - you can pick them up for £15-£20 now - so you don't
lose access to any stored data. You will, of course, have to reinstall
any apps on the new machine though.

Dr Zoidberg wrote:
Jez T wrote:
wrote in message
My father in law purchased a PC from PC World for £700 in May 2004.
So a cheap, consumer PC, almost 3 years old.

It is now not working
Hardware or software?

what the defnition of a 'reasonable length of time'
However long the warentee period is / was. I'd guess 1 year in this
case.

No , "reasonable" under the SOGA is entirely separate to warranty periods.

Is this defined anywhere
The whole PC industry, from operating systems to periferals, relies on
computers needing changing every 3 years or so. That's just how it
works. If they lasted for 5-6 years, it would break the economics of
the R&D that goes into making the PC you buy today as good as it gets.

I disagree. The industry relies on people thinking they need to upgrade
every few years to run the latest software and gadgets.

Decent quality PC hardware will work reliably for far longer than 3 years.
We've had a pile of PCs at work that must have been approaching 10 years old
that worked fine but were just obsolete.

PSUs get flaky and Hard Drives die but much of a PC will run forever if
looked after.

I agree with Dr Zoidberg. I think it is reasonable to expect that the
solid state parts of a desktop PC will continue working for at least six
years (and beyond that it is academic) barring the consumer's
negligence. Not sure what the limit on the power supply, or disk drives
would be.

It would be best to find out what the problem is first.
--
Michael Hoffman

"Jez T" wrote in message
...

"GB" wrote
The main question is a purely
practical one, namely does your father in law need any of the data on the
hard disk?

Is it the hard disk that has failed?

If the HDD has failed then he's probably lost the data anyway. My concern
was that PCW techs might just wipe the disk anyway.

GB wrote:
"Jez T" wrote in message
...
"GB" wrote
The main question is a purely
practical one, namely does your father in law need any of the data on the
hard disk?
Is it the hard disk that has failed?

If the HDD has failed then he's probably lost the data anyway. My concern
was that PCW techs might just wipe the disk anyway.

An acquaintance told me how they needed a repair for their iBook's dodgy
screen cable. The repair centre called and tried to sell a "data
protection service" for only £120. The customer balked at this since the
problem had nothing to do with their hard drive.

It came back with the hard drive deliberately wiped.
--
Michael Hoffman

"Colin Wilson" wrote in message
t...


Take the side back off the machine and have a good look around the
processor socket (you're looking for the cylindrical things stood
upright off the main circuit board). If any of them show signs of a
brown substance (often around the top) or look like they're not
perfectly flat on top, get yourself a new PC - it won't be worth the
expense of replacing the motherboard in the old one unless you're up to
fiddling with it yourself, and even then, you're up against getting
everything working again, and possible hardware incompatibilities.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

This machine was bought May 2004, and I thought that most of the problems
with the faulty electrolyte had been dealt with by then?

However, the OP did ask on a legal group, and faulty electrolyte in the
capacitors would be in a completely different category from failure due to
normal wear and tear. An expert will be along in a moment, but IMHO a PC
sold with an inherently faulty motherboard would NOT have been of
merchantable quality at the time it was sold, and the OP would have a good
claim under the SOGA.

As you say, the OP can check the PC himself, and if the OP does an internet
search for 'bulging capacitors', he will get an idea of what to look for.
If your suspicions are confirmed he will need to get some sort of
independent expert opinion, and the motherboard should be retained as
evidence.

This machine was bought May 2004, and I thought that most of the problems
with the faulty electrolyte had been dealt with by then?

Perhaps, but i'm sure a great many machines and components had already
been manufactured and were sat in the distribution chain by then.

Some manufacturers (Dell IIRC) - initially tried to deny there was a
problem despite mounting and massive evidence against their dismissal,
yet had a replacement policy in other countries.

The other boards i've seen with that problem personally are ECS and MSI

In article ,
(Colin Wilson) wrote:

Some manufacturers (Dell IIRC) - initially tried to deny there was
a problem despite mounting and massive evidence against their
dismissal, yet had a replacement policy in other countries.

GX270

--
Paul Cummins

**FREE** mobile phones, with FREE line rental
http://www.gstgroup.co.uk/