How Would You Write A Computer Lemon Law?
from the not-so-easy dept
Ed Foster has written up a short blurb for Gripeline discussing how complicated it would be to write a "lemon law" for computers, but suggesting that one is still needed. As he notes, it's not as easy as just replacing the word "automobile" with "computer" in existing car lemon laws. After all, there are many different reasons why a computer would stop working -- and not all of it has to do with the hardware. However, putting a software exception in place would then just make computer manufacturers more likely to quickly blame software problems for any issues. Of course, a few years back some were suggesting that we needed lemon laws for software as well, so maybe the answer is to write an inclusive lemon law. To be honest, however, it's not entirely clear that such laws really are necessary. While my own personal experience suggests that many computer makers are quite resistant to admitting they sold you a lemon (my laptop with 6 failed hard drives in 18 months was a fun one to deal with), there are enough services and outlets for people to now make their problems very, very public -- and that's made some computer makers much more responsive. So, perhaps it's as problem that works itself out, as computer makers recognize that there is a huge cost in public relations damage to not responding to complaints.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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I wouldn't
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Re: I wouldn't
How do you assign blame? Is it the fault of the people who wrote the software, the people who installed it, the people who wrote the drivers, or the people who made the hardware?
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Re: Re: I wouldn't
You already assigned the blame; and, properly. The manufacturer's (i.e., "brand") job is to give you a finished system, with the proper drivers, and they failed at it.
Now, do you sue them for giving you the wrong software? I say "No"...but, that's your own dilemna to deal with. Just ask them to send you a new "Drivers" disk.
> I don't know, they may have good reason for suing MS in some cases.
MS's liability doesn't include any drivers beyond the few generics that come with Windows. They don't have any control over which other drivers you ultimately end up with, so blaming them is simply misguided.
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software is to blame many times..
Or there's MY laptop where upon installing SP2 it would randomly shut down. This happened less than 2 hours after I installed a 1Gb SODIMM module so for about 4 days I blamed the module until I tested it and then switched back to the old one to get the same effects. A simple search turned up that a simple registry entry was at fault over the ACPI settings; I added it and it's worked fine ever since.
Or my friend who sold a laptop to a lady who then tried to blame him because the drivers for her wifi card weren't compatible with that version of Windows and that particular model laptop. The lesson she apparently learned was "the wifi card is much cheaper and easier to replace".
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!!!!
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o_O
Let's pass a law to make it illegal to be poor. Then, there won't be any more poor people!
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Re: o_O
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Re: o_O
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Re: Re: o_O
- Anatole France
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Re:
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Re: Re: Lawyers
Hah, you can never have too many lawyers. In fact, the more you have, the more you need.
Spoken like a true lawyer, laughing (at us) all the way to the bank.
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"Lemon" clauses already exist
When I present scenarios, vendors like to throw probabilities: "what you suggest is a one in a thousand likelihood", etc. But in an environment with 5000 units, you'll see 5???
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Lemon Law unnecessary
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Re: Lemon Law unnecessary
I remember an incident, or two, not long ago where a software update sidelined a Canadian bank's network, and another for a large personal communications device provider. Who can say what the ultimate cost of either of those two incidents actually was?
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Re: Re: Lemon Law unnecessary
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Computer lemon law website
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Re: Computer lemon law website
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I think everyone's missing the point
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Re: I think everyone's missing the point
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Simple Test
LEMON ==0;
IF (OS = Windoze)
THEN LEMON ==1
ELSE;
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Lemons in the Market
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Re: Lemons in the Market
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Re: Re: Lemons in the Market
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Re: Re: Re: Lemons in the Market
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Lemons in the Market
Well, that all depends on the auto and the computer. Some computers cost much much more than some autos. But so what?
Virtually all new automobiles are completely dependent on software running on their on-board computers. Not much of a difference there either.
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Tech Wild West
Yea, perish the thought software and hardware manufactures would be forced to stand behind there product.
I would love to see some type of product liability placed on software companies, at the very least software/hardware should be TAX FREE, since the government does, effectively nothing to really help the public at large in that areas.
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Let's not get ahead of ourselves...
Lawyers are like HIV; you're only "happy" with them when the eventualities could be worse.
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How long...
If you know something I don't, please inform me.
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