I recently received paperwork regarding the impending settlement of a class action lawsuit (originally filed in Texas) against Compaq for making, essentially, crap.
I found this article online:
It details the impending settlement. A blurb from it:
I didn’t buy any new parts because I figured it would be useless to try and fix a dying machine. (The hard drive was still replaced while under warranty.)
My story: The year was 1997…I was a super-newbie, fresh out of college and eager to make her first Big Purchase–a computer! Ooh, ahh. I bought a Compaq Presario 4712. It immediately proceeded to vomit all over my life: hard drive replaced within 8 months, Sleep Mode useless and locking up everything, floppy drive randomly accessed with ugly grinding noises thanks to a bug in the machine Compaq themselves admitted to (eventually grinding it until it became useless), Phone Center that did not work, etc, so forth, and so on. As of now, it’s in my classroom, good pretty much for games and word processing only. The monitor is also going out, which the kids find cool.
Another link:
http://members.aol.com/CClass450/
This guy has all kinds of interesting links and information regarding Compaq’s problems, including the lawsuit and other messes.
Anyone else out there get this letter about being compensated? And has anyone else heard about this? I’m actually embarrassed that I bought such an inferior product; I pride myself on researching and being careful in technical purchases. That time, I was naive and ignorant about computers and paid for it dearly. Dude.
(I now have a Dell, which is what most Dopers asked recommended–as well as what Consumer Reports and other such organizations rated well.)
Oh…and funny thing. My school district recently bought new computers for all the classrooms. What’d we get? Compaqs. Boooooooooooooo!