A few days ago,while I was browsing/blogging/studying for BITSAT(I don’t exactly remember),Firefox crashed followed by GNOME crashing and the login window appeared.I logged in and checked System Monitor immediately to see what had gone wrong.It displayed
Memory:128 MB
No,there’s no typo there,I actually had 384 MB SD RAM(128+256MB).I immediately realized that there was something wrong with the 256 MB RAM.I talked to Ankur about it and we concluded that the RAM had died of an overdose of current.
I took out the RAM and saw a sticker and a hologram with ‘Lifetime Warranty’ written on it.It was manufactured by a company called ‘DIGITAL Memory’.I realized that I had bought it from my Mama(Mom’s Brother in Hindi).I called him up and asked him the exact meaning of ‘Lifetime Warranty’.It turned out that Lifetime meant till the product is manufactured.
For noobs,a SD RAM is legacy stuff and almost nobody manufactures it anymore.Its the old stock which is sold these days.Anyways I sent it to him(He lives in Jaipur) through a relative(Uncle) of mine who had to go there to organize the IPL matches there.My Mama sent it to the company to claim the warranty.In the meantime,I had to work with 128MB RAM.Using my computer was an unpleasant experience.My sister used Windows and it was damn slow.Firefox took a complete minute to start.I booted up Ubuntu and was surprised to see that Ubuntu was pretty fast even with 128MB RAM.
Coming back to the main topic of discussion here,the warranty.My mama sent it to the company and told me that they would reply in a day.The next day,my Mama called me up telling me that 256 MB RAM is no longer manufactured.
Sad News?Not exactly….Read on.
The company thus sent a 512 MB RAM which is still manufactured or is still in stock(no sure about this one).
Hooray!
I was thrilled to hear this.I had already planned to buy a new RAM module and had no hope of getting 256MB back.
So this is the situation now,I will have 640MB RAM in 4 days from now.Effectively,I exchanged a dead 256MB RAM for a brand new 512MB RAM for free.All’s well that ends well.
PS-You can boil your head on Vivek’s blog for some action packed stories related to warranties.
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