Hi all,
Regarding the ELCOT offer, it is not about the guarantee on paper
as much as it is to the degree of trust one can place with the
company.Aditya gave us a nice and long description extolling the virtues of
ELCOT's offer as well as other activities of ELCOT. What he failed to
address was about the discrepancies on the part of ELCOT with what is on
paper and it's dealing with the people. He also failed to allay the fear and
unrest in taufiq aalam's mind with respect to ELCOT. He dismisses it as "
mindless rant because of one bad experience." Now let us check out
what this "one bad experience" is. Well first of all let me clearly state
who i am. I am taufiq's friend and i went
along with him to check out this laptop that is supposed to be on
display "<http://tr_1215488444101/>Inspection
would be facilitated on Saturday and Sunday only in
Chennai<http://www.elcot.in/StudentLaptop2008/studentLaptopFAQ.php#2419>as
a special case. Inspection hours - between 9.30 a.m and 5
p.m."<http://www.elcot.in/StudentLaptop2008/studentLaptopFAQ.php#2419>
Well we did go on Sunday at about 10 a.m. Before leaving we called up
ELCOT.A man picked up the phone and we asked him whether the laptops were
available for inspection and he said it was. Then we asked him for
directions which he gave us. On arriving at the place, we had to go up and
ask the guy regarding the inspection. The reaction he gave us cannot be
expressed in words but it was a typical "I am the boss here and who the hell
are u midgets to ask me for anything" kind of a reaction given to us. Then
we told him about the call and the security, while sneering down on us,
flatly refused having received any call and he thought we were making fools
of ourselves. It was the typical Government employed behaviour that we have
been seeing all over our lives.
By the way what was that about "I know that its a little hard to
put up with a government organisation, because we have been brought up in a
way to have very negative thoughts about it." Whoever says such a statement
must have never had to deal with a government organisation himself. It is
the same all over the country to a large extent and hence we prefer and
trust private companies over government ones even if they offer us a cheap
deal. The red tape is a very irritating and life-consuming force, it just
sucks out the life from u. In fact i feel it would be very good if they keep
a board outside their premises that says "Beware of GOVT employees". Then,
at least innocent unassuming people like us will know what we are dealing
with beforehand. "I think that ELCOT is different. If we are a
little patient (just like we are patient with driver problems in Linux :D ),
we can be happy with this deal." Well well , maybe the product from ELCOT is
different but the employees definitely are the same as far as we know. They
may promise you three years warranty but the government is so good in making
you run around for some mistake of the Government. In fact we have come
across so many instances wherein we had to run around for some mistake of
some Government employee's. I hope that it is not the case with ELCOT.
Having said that I am going to wind up the rant which i think is
not so mindless and not without good reason. So far we have evaluated the
people not yet the product. We will be doing that and will get back to you
guys. Who knows it may be the case of the "Frowning man selling candy".
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 20:02:21 +0530
From: "Aditya M" <aditya87@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Ilugc] Re: FYI: ELCOT Student Labtop Offer
To: ILUG-C <ilugc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID:
<c09091460807070732p2488f6f8u2e7160e31d38e815@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hi,
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 6:26 PM, taufiq aalam <taufiqaalam@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
the
I Never trust goverment employees, and they proved me that I am RIGHT.
1.What is the gurantee that they will deliver Laptop on time ?
2.What is the gurantee that the purchase order for Student Laptop will be
confirmed ?
They say that - 3 years International warranty for Laptop and 1 year
warranty for battery from the date of installation and handing over of
Laptop.
I CANNOT TRUST THEM, BECUASE THEY JUST EAT THEIR WORDS.
I am convinced to consider this a mindless rant because of one bad
experience. You are taking it far too seriously. There is no need to
buy the laptop on terms of "we will keep our *word* about the
guarantees". You will surely get official documentation to the effect
of giving you the promised warranty. And this is company warranty, not
ELCOT's. I know of a couple of friends who bought the laptop last year
in a similar offer and are pretty happy with their choice and service.
They say that 4-5 weeks is the delivery time. It is understandable as
its a high volume deal. A similar sale happened last year, and there
were no problems with delivery, etc. At least nothing happened in the
case of my friends and nothing was reported in the papers either.
Similarly, with the confidence that it happened ok last year, I can
say that your concern about purchase orders is equally baseless.
The company has a good track record in this computer business with the
social cause of promoting linux usage to save costs and spreading
openness/freedom. In case you don't know, they have setup "ELCOT labs"
all over Tamil Nadu in state sponsored schools with SUSE enterprise
linux. Just because the staff here in Chennai are incompetent, you
bring great charges to defame them. A little overboard I think.
*Please do not got for it.*Dell
Shed some 4k-to 5k and you can buy the same hardware configuration from
,HP or some other merchant, and I am sure that the service will be toyour
satisfaction.
Its very difficult to escape the Windows tax if you buy it yourself.
I think you should try to find the price of the same configuration in
dell, along with the three years support (at least they have a
customise feature [0]). I did it for you. See the order details at
[1].
Price after taxing (including delivery), is Rs. 56,392!
Ok, even I am terribly surprised by this (so please check at the link
above). But the configuration is nearly the same, except that the
wem-cam is 2 MP instead of ELCOT's 1.3 MP. I had to 7.3K for 320GB
harddisk, ~1K for carry case, and some 8 K for 3 years support. I hope
you reconsider, because you will miss out on quite something here!
Acer does not seem to display prices on its site or I would have
checked them out as well. But Acer does seem to preload linux for some
models, but I have heard that it is very minimal version. That does
not really matter for us, eh? We can always install something :P.
Perhaps its cheap compared to Dell. If someone finds out, please
share.
I can predict that people will argue that when we buy by ourselves, we
won't go in for so much support, HDD space, etc. So that is again
another point for why people should take this offer more seriously.
I know that its a little hard to put up with a government
organisation, because we have been brought up in a way to have very
negative thoughts about it. I think that ELCOT is different. If we are
a little patient (just like we are patient with driver problems in
Linux :D ), we can be happy with this deal.
[0]:
http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/featured_notebook7?c=in&cs=indhs1&l=en&s=dhs
[1]: http://verboselyme.wordpress.com/files/2008/07/dell-offer.pdf
--
Aditya Manthramurthy
B. Tech, CSE NIT Trichy
------------------------------
_______________________________________________
ilugc mailing list
ilugc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
End of ilugc Digest, Vol 50, Issue 19
*************************************
