Is it really common sense?

Common Sense in the Computer World?

Hi. I'm a tech at ACS. We do a lot of work on computers, building from scratch, doing upgrades, troubleshooting, replacing faulty parts, etc. When we build a machine or do upgrades on a machine it is our common practice to provide the original disk, manual, warranty information, etc. supplied with the peripherals, so that in the future, the customer will have them in case something needs to be reinstalled. If a vendor sends an item that does not have the disks, warranty, instructions, etc. we have the right to refuse the product and send it back until the correct shipment is received. Why is that? Well, it only seems logical for someone who builds machines as a professional, to make the effort to cause the least amount of complication for the customer, or on himself if he originally built or upgraded the machine and may have to work on it again in the future. What happens at our office constantly is, people who buy machines from major manufacturers or independent computer guys end up coming into our office for us to fix what should have been built correctly in the first place. Yes, we are biased against certain brands simply for the fact that we keep having to fix those same brands over and over again. Independent computer builders or people passing along a used computer sometimes refuse or "forget" to provide things that the customer should have, like an official Windows CD, device drivers, instructions, warranty papers, etc. Or even better, there might be a few illegal copies of software on the hard drive, with no backup disks, so that when the computer acts up and the customer loses their favorite apps, they can't understand why we won't give them a copy of an app, and we have to enlighten them on the nuances of the software world. That makes it our utmost pleasure to go and do the job right the second time around, and keeps us very busy attracting new customers when they see how we do things. So it would be in the best interest of anyone who gets a computer, whether new or used, to keep the appropriate CD's, instruction manuals, warranty information, manufacturer/tech support info, in a nice, safe place, because chances are, you will need them again. It is the resposibility of the buyer/owner/operator of a computer to recieve and keep up with these things from the original seller. It is not our place to make these things magically appear, so please don't ask.

The exception to that rule is drivers for modems, video cards, sound cards, etc. We can hunt those down from the net and put them onto a CD, for usually somewhere between $5 and $10, depending on how much searching is involved.

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