B-School Computers Sent Back For Repairs

Just weeks into the first year that IBM personal computers (PCs) have been strongly recommended for first-year Business School students, about 10 percent of the machines sold by the B-School have been sent to the shop for repairs.

Ninety-one malfunctioning computers with "burn-in" problems ranging from bad memory switches to diskette drive failures have been brought to an IBM service center on the B-school campus since being distributed over Labor Day weekend, said Frayda Galvin '59, B-school academic services coordinator.

"It [the PC problems] is certainly unacceptable as far as we're concerned," said Paul Newman, New England IBM information representative.

Newman added that the most common reason for bringing the computers in for repair was diskette drive problems, but after an IBM entry systems division in Florida checked out 43 returned drives, only 22 were found to be faulty.

All except for one of the 91 computers were repaired and returned to their owners within one day.

All 988 PC systems purchased from IBM by the B-school have two-year maintenance warranties. Galvin, who is overseeing all aspects of introducing PCs into the first-year Masters of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum, said IBM replaced computer components if the owner felt they were defective.

The steady flow of PC repairs has slowed down in the last week. Galvin said, but first-year MBA candidate Maury A. Peiperl said he and about 40 other students have computers that fail to read the disk right after it is put in the drive.

Peiperl, a computer engineer, said the intermittent problem is an "inconvenience", but it goes away after the computer warms up for five minutes: "It's just a little annoyance that IBM could have done better with."