Maximum PC

My notebook recently died with the now infamous 1 long 2 short beeps. HP is extending the manufacturer warranty to 24 months only for SOME of their notebooks. My notebook (RM699AV) is not one of them, and so now, my 14 month old $1000 notebook is garbage.

This thread has been started in the HP forums by people in the same situation.

Someone at that thread said that, according to HP customer service, they are only extending the warranty of AMD based notebooks. This doesn't make sense to me since the problem is with the GPU and not the CPU. If AMDs have a problem then the Intel based notebooks do too.

Attack!

I R lulz @ j00

So .. you're complaining that they didn't extend the warranty to which you agreed when you bought the product?

Have you tried contacting the manufacturer of the GPU ... you know, since that is the part that failed?

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to agree with Jip here.

It is unfortunate that your laptop died 2 months after the 12 month warranty, but the manufacturer should not be held liable to replace or fix the laptop that is out of warranty. When you purchased the laptop, you agreed to only have a 1 year warranty with an option to purchase an extended warranty, which you did not do.

At the time of production, the laptop functioned exactly like it should have (or if it did not you should have returned it at that point), so really they did not know the GPU was going to die in the laptop.

So you are pretty much stuck, but I don't hold HP liable for something such as this, especially since they said it is only a 1 year warranty, when in all actuality you could have bought an extended warranty.

Contact NVIDIA and see what they say.

Also @jipstyle:


Normally I'd agree with you and that was actually my first response. "Oh well, shit happens." But then I read more into it and found out that they were extending warranties on SOME of the notebooks, but not all. This is what made me mad. Why do some get the lucky year extension and others with an identical problem/defect get the shaft? It seems that if they are admitting that something is wrong enough to warrant an extension with one model, why not the other?

I wouldn't be (and wasn't) upset about this if others weren't getting a warranty extension for an identical problem. But HP would never get away with just saying, "sorry, tough luck", to everyone. So I'm sure they ran some numbers and found out who they could screw and who they needed to extend.




I do hold HP liable for this, along with all the other notebook manufacturers. It is their responsibility to test the components they use and if they really cared about the customer and not just selling extended warranties they would make sure their notebooks were built to last. That should include hell-testing their notebooks to find out what will fail and when. And the more I read about this it seems that at least NVIDIA knew about the problem long ago. I find it hard to believe that HP didn't. I believe the BIOS update they issued was created a year ago.

I don't know if you're from the states, but fairly recently some vegetables were found to be contaminated with ecoli. Taco Bell learned that that they may have received some of the contaminated product. So, what they did was immediately stop serving the possibly contaminated vegetables and dump them -- taking a loss on the inventory. I don't see much of a difference here. It doesn't matter who is responsible. I didn't buy a notebook from NVIDIA. I bought it from HP. HP should fix it, and sue NVIDIA or whatever they need to do to recoup some of their loss from this. It was NVIDIAs poor manufacturing but HP's mistake.

And instead of issuing a recall for the faulty notebooks they released a "BIOS update". How can a BIOS update fix defective manufacturing? It can't. The update is just designed to get you beyond your warranty before the death, thus saving HP money. Good accounting decision, bad business decision.

At the very least I want some answers to some questions from HP. When did they first know about the problem? Whey didn't they issue a recall? How did they come to choose the notebook models they did for the warranty extension? How could they let something so monumental happen?

[quote=drainbread]
I R lulz @ j00
[/quote]

Thanks.

The dead GPU issues have been accelerated by higher heat. The AMD mobile CPU's do run hotter than the Intel CPU's. Not by much, but they are hotter.

There's also a different cooling apparatus for th AMD based models than the Intel ones.

If your laptop had died within the warranty period and you would have had a new part plugged in to your laptop already, I could think.....OK...he has a point because his laptop has shown a propensity for early failure. But it lasted for the whole warranty period and you didn't buy the extended warranty. With laptops, I ALWAYS recommend the extended warranty.

I understand your anger. I understand your desire to see HP fix the laptop. No one buys a laptop expecting it to die in 14 months. But this is the real world. Manufacturers are going to make the best business/money saving decisions based on the dollar rather than what's best for YOU.

Show me ONE company that makes a $1000 laptop that would do a voluntary recall of all those laptops. Hell, show me ONE company that would recall a line of $3000 laptops.

It sucks, but you're hosed. Your only recourse is to try and get together a class action lawsuit. HP had dead video chip issues before on the ZD7000 and only a class action lawsuit forced them to make it right. You can look around that forum for more info on what the ZD7000 owners did. Good luck.

Check out the HP Forum thread on this issue and leave your own post. Maybe HP will extend the warranty if enough dissatisfied customers complain.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/for ... 6+28353475

My DV2000t laptop hit the dust just like everyone elses. It stinks that HP offer support for the AMD model, but not the Intel series.

When my laptop died I was happy enough to think that it was 'just one of those things - an unlucky incidence', but from reading around it's obvious that HP knew about this problem but didn't issue a full recall. HP should take full responsibility for selling a defective product.

An update on this for those doing the Google search, etc.

NVidia has set aside $200 million to cover losses associated with this issue, which they have now publicly acknowledged is based on faulty NVidia GPU's. They are also now being sued by shareholders alleging a coverup and fraud, etc.

HP continues to balk at extending warranty coverage to HP Intel-based laptops - the "fix" they offered was to modify the BIOS to run the fan all the time, which appears to have pushed the failure envelope often to just past the warranty date. Even though NVidia has a giant reserve fund to deal with these failures which they acknowledge, and are reimbursing HP, HP claims the Intel failures are somehow unrelated and/or isolated. The HP forums and other Web sites are now littered with hundreds of posts of failures of their most expensive laptops.

Anyone that wants to give HP a pass on this, when they know they have a giant problem, should say hello to the ostrich and HP "Support", as you all have your heads grounded in the same place.

Multiple class action suits were filed against HP over this litigation, which have now been consolidated in Northern California, according to counsel for one of the firms I recently spoke with.

Dood...this thread is 4 months old and we all know about the nVidia class action suits, etc.

.

Thanks, but there was no reference to the same in this thread, and this was a top page Google search item on this issue, so as I mentioned, I wanted to update it for those doing searches on this subject.

I'm gonna memberate a little here and tell you it's a good idea to read the rules of a forum before you go posting.

That being said, Welcome to MaxPC! You should poke around here a little bit and see what we know and how this place works. You might like it.

Hey thanks tvccs. Just because one person here, knows about the defective nvidia chip , used by HP, doesn't mean you shouldn't post it when you want to.
There are a lot of people out there , with screwed up notebooks, who don't know a thing about the defective parts used in them.

And as far as people here saying, "Well , it made it through the warranty period, what more could you ask for", I'll tell you what I'm asking for, as I am an owner of an HP, Intel cpu, "Defective Nvidia" chip notebook. I'm asking for a non-defective gpu to be installed on my notebook !

I have contacted HP 5 different times, over the last 4 months , hoping to get a different reaction to the problem than, "I'm sorry, your out of warranty, but we have great deals on new notebooks", talk about your customer no-service!

HP put a "DEFECTIVE" part inside their notebooks, which Nvidia has admitted that they shipped "DEFECTIVE" parts to HP and Dell ...........................and Paid them millions of dollar$ to fix said defective hardware .

There is a difference between putting a part in a notebook that "MIGHT" give out and putting a part in a notebook that "WILL" give out !

Anyways , just waiting on the class action suit to finish up, and I know I probably won't see a dime or gpu out of it, but Iwill enjoy watching HP squirm !

Did it make it through the warranty period?

If no, then you have a reason to be upset.

If yes, then it sucks to be you.

It doesn't matter if Nvidia sold the parts knowing there was something wrong with them. If they last for the included warranty period, that's all the company is liable for. To hold HP responsible for this, you would have to prove that HP KNEW the GPU's were defective when they installed them. I doubt this is the case.

So once again, we have a perfect example of an ignorant individual getting pissed off at the wrong people for a problem they weren't covered for at the time the problem happened.

Yes...HP and Nvidia both acknowledged the chips were defective...Nvidia with its $200 million set-aside fund and public statements acknowledging their defective chips, and HP with its half-assed BIOS "upgrade" which turned the fan on all the time and managed to at least get the slightly cooler Intel systems to fail at an average point between 12-15 months. HP is covering the AMD systems which failed sooner because they usually failed before 12 months with their defective GPU's. The GPU's are identical, and defective in both cases.

The only ignorant individual here is YOU for not bothering to know the facts of the case and blathering on about anything that manages to somehow get through a warranty period being otherwise perfect. Nvidia has acknowledged their defective chips, which constitute nearly the entire 7000 and 8000 series GPU's by their own public statements. You don't own one of the systems, surprise, surprise.

I hope HP and Nvidia call you as an expert in the case, and I'm on the other side. I think I'll win 99 out of 100 juries on that one. Go play Quake, dude.

A warranty is an agreement between the purchaser and manufacturer of the given product. The manufacturer guarantees that the item will work properly and as advertised for the period of the warranty.

Anything beyond that is a nice bonus for the consumer.

The fact that money has been put aside says quite a few things, but the assumption you make is unfounded.

a) It is cheaper to pay out than it is to defend yourself in court.
b) See a).

The fact is that the product you bought lasted as long as the manufacturer promised it would. The fact is that you have no ethical ground on which to complain. The fact is that you, like so many others, want something for free.

Is your house in foreclosure too? I'm curious.

Nah...I sold it when the market peaked.

Nvidia's set-aside and coverup of its defective chips has it being sued by its own stockholders, so that "strategy" failed twice. The HP BIOS "fix" was only a mask designed to cover a larger problem they were fully aware of, and degraded the system's performance otherwise, especially when running on batteries. It was a specific "fix" designed to hide a much larger problem.

Nvidia has publicly acknowledged it shipped defective chips...HELLO.

http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?64683

All I asked for, like everyone else who bought and paid a small fortune for these systems, was to have them include non-defective components. Just because the fan was turned on all the time to get them just past the warranty period does not mean there was not a defect.

If the engine blew up in your car and it fell apart a week after the warranty ran out, would you simply cest' la vie? Buy another? No problem? And if thousands of your neighbor's cars did the same thing, would you just look at them and say "too bad, any extra time you got beyond the warranty period was a luxury", and "you just want something for free". It's the equivalent of your local Ford/GM/Toyota dealer that would put a new battery in your car that was being drained by a faulty electrical system they knew was defective, and when the warranty period ran out, stopping replacing said batteries knowing the defective electrical system would fry the entire car almost as soon as that happened. Think that one would hold up in court? Or do you think they'd go to jail and get fined billions of dollars?

Think the Congress would go for that? Maybe you, Neil Boortz and Rush would be the only ones howling about us wanting "something for free" while the same ilk wants infinite corporate welfare and no regulation while blaming anyone but themselves for our 10-trillion dollar debt while whining about too much regulation and too many taxes, despite the fact our real tax rates, especially for corporations, are some of the lowest in the western world.

You asked about my house...and I'll ask...Did you work for Christopher Cox at the SEC when that naughty whsitleblower came in and pointed to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme and say..."don't bother me with this...there's business to be had and money to be made around here and anyone that gets screwed, too bad, and besides, there's not a problem anyway."

After all, he was just doing his job as a nice little Republican deregulator trying to loosen the nasty ole shackles of unnecessary regulation and protect vital corporate and stockholder interests. The market and corporations always know what's best for us anyway. Golly gee.

And you have the balls to talk about ethics?

You're hilarious.

The product lasted throughout the warranty period. That is *all* that the manufacturer promised.

Everything else you've spouted is nonsense.

For instance, that $200 million fund they set aside: "NVIDIA plans to take a one-time charge from $150 million to $200 million against cost of revenue for the second quarter to cover anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses."

That quote was pulled from one of your links.



Yes. I'd be pissed, but I know that I don't have a right to claim that my product should last longer than the warranty. That is just asinine and childish. I don't rewrite my agreements after the fact in order to get the most from my purchases.



Yes, I do. Unlike you, my argument is based on your actions. You've typed a bunch of nonsense about a bunch of crooks and tried to associate me with them because I disagree with you. Fantastic reasoning skills, sparky ... you should have been a lawyer.

In this argument, you lose.

And in playing Quake, you'd lose against me there as well.

The car thing is irrelevant. It hasn't happened in recent history. There's zero precedence for it. There is, however, a huge precedence for American's to whine, bitch and moan their asses off over shit just like this. Back in the 40's, Americans got shitty cars with shitty warranties. And when shit broke after the damned warranty, they rolled up their frikkin shirts and got to wrenching.

YOU agreed to the warranty period when YOU bought the laptop. Yes, it has happened to me and yes, I ate the cost to fix it.

NVIDIA is setting aside funds for the repairs. And that's anticipated warranty returns. That doesn't indicate to me that Nvidia is planning on replacing every single 7000/8000 series GPU.

Thing is, you're too ignorant to realize that HP is just reacting to the issues one of their parts suppliers is responsible for. Nvidia knew the parts were borked and likely to die when they shipped those parts out. HP started installing them and selling them before they figured out the GPU's were shit. They issued a BIOS tweak to increase the speed of the fan to keep in working beyond warranty. If there's culpability in that, a JUDGE will decide it.

But knowing the ever litigious America I've served for going on 20 years, both companies will end up paying via a class action lawsuit. And MY FUCKING price of owning a laptop will increase because a bunch of snot nosed American shit headed BRATS can't figure out that 12 months or 24 months means EXACTLY that.

No means no too. Would you just go ahead a rape a chick simply because she's got a "defective" personality but looks great? I guess it's all a matter of what you think is proper for theft.

Whether or not HP knew about the defective gpu does not hold water here.
Again......I will state "NVIDIA PAID HP MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO CORRECT THE GPU ISSUE" ! I typed in caps to make sure ignorant people like you, see the light !

And to enlighten you even further, since you are the ignorant one, the notebooks HP's repairing are being repaired with..................you guessed it................the same defective gpu. Think Hp knows about this ?

I know thousands of people who would diagree with you.

Also, never noticed anything on HP's websight or in their warranty that states "We use DEFECTIVE parts" !

I don't want anything for free. All I want is a NON-DEFECTIVE gpu.................that I paid for !

What happens, when a defective item, i.e. seatbelt, ignition switch, brakes are found on an automotive thats out of warranty ?...................................................RECALL!