Hi,

I have always offered a limited lifetime labor (hardware replacement)
warranty on the systems I build for people for the hardware I used.  It was
a selling feature that helped sell the systems and the hardware with in.
It brought back many people, so I could then "sell" upgrades, over the
years.

They would pay for the part after 1yr, but I did the labor for ZIP.  But
more often than not, when they came in for the Free labor, they would ask
what could be done to "upgrade" the system.  The end result was they ended
up paying for an upgrade and my labor to do so instead of a "free" labor
hardware repair.

I only give them one FLUBBER for software problems.  I showed them the PC
was operating correctly on delivery, and everything worked and was fine.  I
told them they had only 1 software screw-up repair at gratis for the first
6 months, after that it was $95 to reload the system and they had to bring
all the software back in that I was giving them on delivery.  Somehow just
about all of them managed to not have to spend that additional $95.00 and I
probably only did 1% software reloads gratis.

To answer your question, I would "upgrade" them to windows XP PRO.   With
XP Pro is mopre bullet proof and user freindly, and you can use the remote
control feature and possible help them on line, at your convience, rather
than on shop time.



At 08:46 PM 02/18/2003 +1300, you wrote:
>I have a customer who I'd have to classify as 'difficult'.  18 months ago, I
>built him a 1.4Ghz\256 DDR W98SE system.  Since then I've lost track of the
>number of rebuilds and repairs I've had to do to keep it running.  He, and
>his family, just keep breaking it.
>
>I'm going to give it one last shot, but it's occurred to me that maybe these
>people need an OS that'll take more of a hammering than W98SE  (like maybe
>an abacus)
>
>So, what do you think?  Win2K? XP? NT?
>
>Suggestions welcomed.
>
>
>Ian Porter
>Computer Guys Inc.
>Arrowtown
>New Zealand
>[log in to unmask]
>
>                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
>                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
>                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>
>
God Bless America!

Joe Lore
MicroComputerCenter, Inc.
781-933-5530 / [log in to unmask]

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