warranty questions

gib786 · 4 May 2006 at 14:59

dunno if this should go in here but i have a few warranty type questions. Picked up a new laptop yesterday off ebay, the thing comes with 3 years warranty from the manufacturer. Now if i upgraded the ram and hard drive, and a few months later the laptop needed to be repaired under the warranty would the company still repair it, and would they return my upgraded components or would i better of keeping the old ram and hard drive an just popping them in if i need to get it repaired?

Rotty · 4 May 2006 at 15:03

I would always keep the old parts so that I can return it to standard if needed

stoofa · 4 May 2006 at 15:15

Depends on how much work is required to upgrade either.
We buy Sony Vaio units here at work.
Our current model of choice ships with 512MB and the Sony official upgrade to 1GB is £98+vat
We however buy a 512MB module (Crucial) for £34inc
The memory fits into a trap-door on the bottom of the laptop. There are full instructions on the Sony website on how to fit memory to your laptop.

Sony have never given us any hassle when we've had to envoke warranty on a machine where we've upgraded the memory.

Hard Drive upgrades however are a lot different and requires the removal of the keyboard and basically dismantling half of the laptop.
I believe that does invalidate the warranty.

Check with manufacturer to be 100% sure.

peter_hutson · 4 May 2006 at 16:09

I'm fairly sure most decent manufacturers would have no problems with you upgrading your laptop, especially if the upgrade in question is explained in the manual. When I say decent companies, I naturally exclude the purple shirt brigade.

I remeber years ago that TINY computers (Don't think they count as a competitor any more as they have since gone bust) put little tags on the cases of their desktop PCs, these tags broke if the case was removed and invalidated the warranty. For the life of me I can't think why they went out of business.....

Haggisman · 4 May 2006 at 17:45

peter_hutson said:
I remeber years ago that TINY computers (Don't think they count as a competitor any more as they have since gone bust) put little tags on the cases of their desktop PCs, these tags broke if the case was removed and invalidated the warranty. For the life of me I can't think why they went out of business.....

Purple Shirt still do these on their prebuilds...<expletive deleted>

peter_hutson · 5 May 2006 at 16:13

Haggisman said:
Purple Shirt still do these on their prebuilds...<expletive deleted>

Truely shocking, I thought the PC retail market had moved on from this kind of practice. Clearly not. I wonder how long it will be until be see another case of fixing expansion card in place with a kind of resin, can't remember the culprit 100%. But I think they are still in business.

stoofa · 6 May 2006 at 03:26

*Note*
The OP is asking specifically about a "Laptop".
Comparing upgrades on a desktop & a laptop is apples & oranges.

Taking the case off a PC and performing 99% of upgrades is childs play - the kind of thing you can do in your sleep.
Stripping a laptop down to get to a HD is certainly not something that should be undertaken by just anyone and involves a hell of a lot more skill and work.

Craig321 · 6 May 2006 at 03:46

gib786 said:
dunno if this should go in here but i have a few warranty type questions. Picked up a new laptop yesterday off ebay, the thing comes with 3 years warranty from the manufacturer. Now if i upgraded the ram and hard drive, and a few months later the laptop needed to be repaired under the warranty would the company still repair it, and would they return my upgraded components or would i better of keeping the old ram and hard drive an just popping them in if i need to get it repaired?

The laptop will probably have some sort of seal on top of a screw or something saying warranty void if seal broken.

Clarkey · 6 May 2006 at 04:31

my fujitsu laptop had no such seal, and there are full instructions in the user manual on how to remove the hdd cover and replace the hdd, and indeed how to remove the main cover to change memory. There is however a warranty sticker on the cooling system screws.

richieboy · 6 May 2006 at 07:17

Clarkey said:
my fujitsu laptop had no such seal, and there are full instructions in the user manual on how to remove the hdd cover and replace the hdd, and indeed how to remove the main cover to change memory. There is however a warranty sticker on the cooling system screws.

Worst part of my previous job was removing HDD's from lappys last year. Its fairly straight forward and whilst working on various models from Acer/Sony/Tosh/etc i found no warranty seals.

Certain manufacturers laptops were more fiddly than others, and i couldn't help but feel they were doing it to make it difficult so people didn't bother.