When folks ask us what kind of guarantee some computer hardware or software comes with, sometimes we can answer, "It's a lifetime guarantee." Then we add, "They don't mean your lifetime."
It's for the lifetime of the company. In fact, sometimes it's just for the lifetime of the product - in other words, until you run into a problem with the thing! And when it comes to computers, a lifetime can end before you finish describing how long it is!There's a dangerous myth cherished by computer buyers. Many think the bigger the company, the less likely it is to go out of business, leaving you stranded. They think size safeguards you against being left with a product nobody supports, nobody improves and for which nobody sells repair parts.
Hah! Remember the General Electric computer? The RCA computer? If you don't, you're not alone. Those folks got out of the mainframe business during our first years in computers, the mid-1960s. Anyone who bought their machines got stranded.
Tragedy can trap customers even when a company stays in the business. Take IBM, which left a lot of people in tears when it walked away from the PCjr. You'd think a company like IBM would at least keep making replacement parts.
Think again. When Junior turned out to be far from a gold mine, it got kicked out of the family fast. A couple of obscure stores now specialize in selling repair and upgrade parts for PCjr. But their prices get steeper and steeper as their customers get more desperate.
Did you learn anything from seeing PCjr's fate? Not if you bought the portable IBM Convertible! Remember the Apple III? For that matter, remember the much-touted Apple Lisa? Magazines got rich on all the ad space bought for Lisa.
Remember ITT? It's possible that they dumped their computer business. On the other hand, it's possible they didn't. We can't find anybody to ask! We tested their IBM-compatible computers years ago. They were first rate. They were engineered to look good and run well for as long as they lasted. But ITT apparently found out, after years in the personal computer marketplace, that margins are slim and competition fierce. They bailed out.
Not all at once. They spent years spinning off their computer involvement. If memory serves, the first spinoff was named after ITT's computer - Xtra. Then, suddenly, Xtra turned into Alcatel.
Alcatel became Alcatel Qume and, finally, just Qume.
Somewhere in the transmogrification, somebody seems to have lost track of ITT's computer business. Qume deals only in what's left of the ITT printer line, which was lackluster compared to the computers.
At least we think Qume deals in the printers.
For years we've been trying to return a borrowed ITT laser printer - first to Alcatel, then to Alcatel Qume and now to Qume. Since it's taking up a lot of storage space, every once in a while we try again. We can't get anyone at the other end of the phone to tell us what to do with the machine.
Funny thing is, every once in a while we get a letter from some official asking us to send back the printer. Each time we phone to find out how they want it shipped, since it's 85 pounds and once sold for $5,000, the person who signed the letter isn't there any more.
Is possession really nine-tenths of the law? If so, we've possessed this printer a lot longer than ITT did. But even free it's not such a bargain. It never did work really well.
We can't even just throw it out. We don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but here they're getting tough about what the sanitation trucks will take. So it sits gathering dust.
We thought ITT was just our headache until last week. Then a client's ITT computer quit. We traced the problem to the ITT color monitor (a sick transistorized glory, you could say) and carted it off to our favorite repair service.
Next day repairman David Lyle phoned. "It's just a burned-out transistor." Luckily, he'd located the bad part in less than an hour. In computer repairs, most of the high cost is for seek-and-replace time.
"It's transistor number 2SC3883," he said. Good news. Transistors of that sort cost no more than a buck or two . . . when they can be found! Nobody in town, in fact nobody in the Midwest had the part. Since most transistors beginning with the number 2 came from Japan, Lyle tried looking in his Japanese transistor catalog. It wasn't listed. Lyle kicked the mystery into our court.
First we tried Radio Shack. They'd come through for us before. They stock 60,000 different transistors.
But not that one. We did some sleuthing. Lyle told us that the part was made by a Taiwan company called Advanced Datum Corporation. But we couldn't find an address or phone number for them.
As a last resort, we phoned ITT. We could still find them in the phone book. Sort of. We left messages on six different voice mail systems for various remnants of the ITT cadre. No calls have been returned yet.
Hello out there! If anybody from ITT is reading this, could you spare a transistor? Otherwise, for want of a $2 part, our client will have to scrap his $300 monitor.
Like we said, in computers a product warranty never outlasts the product.
(C)1989 P/K Associates Inc., 4343 W. Beltline Hwy, Madison WI 53711.