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Should a '9200' Brand Mean a 9200 GPU?
newsdee asks: "An enormous controversy is going on at the X1000 forums over laptop parts. Some Centrino-based laptops bear a label advertising the Mobility Radeon 9200 brand, but users have found out that the laptop actually contains the 9000 chip. The list of affected machines is as follows: Compaq Presario X1000, HP Pavilion ZT3000 and the HP Compaq NX7000. ATI's and HP's response have been that the label is promising performance and not a specific chip. Yet users seem to not like this at all, apparently because most of them define 'brand' as equating to product. According to reviews, there are no differences (same scores, same clock speed) between the chips other than AGP 8x support, which the Centrino chipset does not provide. I seem to remember that this is not the first time that this kind of thing has happened in PC hardware. Can anybody share insights of whether this is right or wrong? Should I complain about my 9000 chip that delivers what the 9200 brand promises, knowing it has not been overclocked?"
Even if it performs like a 9200, if it does not have a 9200, it's False and Misleading advertising- and that is quite illegal. Even if it's a mistake, the companies guilty of this typically end up on the end of a class-action suit and pay out some small rebate or similar.
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SCO does the same thing, advertising operating systems that are barely UNIX93-compliant as cutting edge.
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Why is it that truth in advertising doesn't seem to matter in computer hardware and software?
Companies seem to be allowed to say whatever they want and don't seem to be taken to task very often by the Federal Trade Commission. It seems that regulation of corporate activities is a thing of the past.
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My 15" Titanium PowerBook, the last round of the series before they became the 15" AlPB, was advertised to contain a Radeon 9000. Nevertheless, bus scanning output from in shows I actually have an 8500. What's the difference? I really don't know. Nevertheless, seems a bit deceptive to me.
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I prefer that my vendors not try to deceive me, even if the deception is harmless.
In reality, AMD is not representing the 2200+ as anything other than a CPU that performs comparably to thier competitor's chip running at 2.2GHz. In no way is their product literature representing anything otherwise.
This is in contrast to what is apparently going on here with the Radeons in the laptops. They're claiming that they're 9200's, when in fact, they're 9000's. Different to different isn't bogus- same to same is and the 9000 to the 9200 is same basic product with enhancements.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Ahh, so exactly how far does HP need to stretch the truth before it becomes illegal then? What if the 9200 had a different internal architecture than the 9000, then would it be wrong?
Is it such a problem for HP to put a ATI 9000 sticker on the case instead of a ATI 9200 one? Its a clear case of misleading advertising. If its a 9000 then say 9000, if its a 9200 then say 9200, don't give this "it has the same performance" BS, hell they could have stuck a Geforce4 5200Go in there and got similar performance, but I would hardly call that a 9200.
How about if I go to the Hyundai dealership, and they have this nice little car that has a 300hp V6! So I buy it, only to find that the engine inside is a dinky little 100hp. I complain, and get the answer, "well the 300hp doesn't fit in there".
Just because the Centrino doesn't support the extra feature (AGP8x, which is not just some random arbitrary feature), doesn't mean you can try and advertise having it! And using the 9200 name is doing exactly that.
(Forgive any flaws in my car analogy - I'm not really a car guy, and I'm sure it shows).
Right, if ATI changed their marketing and claimed that "9200" was not a specific product, but rather a performance indicator like AMD's processor ratings, then this would be a different case entirely. The problem is you can't set expectations one way, change your definitions once a product is being sold on the market, and claim that the purchasers just didn't know that you had changed your definition. That's definitely false labeling and misleading advertising, no way around it.
Just for you information:
Radeon 9000 = AGP 4X
Radeon 9200 = Radeon 9000 + AGP 8X
Centrino = AGP 4X
So, HP thought they might as well stick in some Radeon 9000 and no one would tell the difference.
That actually makes it worse; HP is not only lying about the GPU, HP is passing of their laptop as a AGP 8X machine since sticking a 9200 in an AGP 4X machine is a dumb-ass configuration (it may work, but not up to spec). Since the comparative cost of a GPU is much lower than that of the rest of the laptop, that's the bigger lie.
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Do you consider it "misleading" to label an Athlon running at 1.8GHz as a 2200?
Actually, the equivalent would be AMD selling an Athlon 1.8 labeled as "2.2 GHz". The 2200 is just a model number. You may say that (or the MP/XP) is misleading, but saying 9200 when it's 9000 is simply false. Then, the MP/XP is still fine with me. All the "MP" means is that "we guaranty that it'll work in a multi-processor machine".
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But companies only do that with the un-advertised components of that product. When the describe the pickup, they don't tell you what brand the bolts are, or who made the axle, or who manufactured the circuit boards. But they tell you that the engine is a hemi. If the circuit boards are changed, you don't care, you made no purchasing decision on who/what those are. You did make a purchasing decision on the hemi though, and if they changed that on you and said, don't worry - the performance is the same. They would be facing a class-action lawsuit.
It's all about the fact that they advertised a very specific brand of video cards, and outright lied about it.
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If it says Impala with a V8, it had better be a V8, not a V-6 that performs the same as a V8.
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Always read the fine print.
I have an NX7000, and I specifically configured it on the HP website to have a 9200. Screw the fine print. They either lied, or the deliberately misled. I don't understand why we allow the fine print. Say what the hell you mean.
I agree with the parent, and I really don't know how "Caveat Emptor" got modded 5, Insightful. There was NO fine print stating that these buyers would get a Mobility Radeon 9000, instead of the promised 9200. (A note to mods: Just because someone is FP, doesn't mean they have anything valid to say.)
And for all of the people out there who say, "Well, what does it matter, they got the same thing anyway," I remind them that for the majority of consumers (including myself!) who didn't know that 9000 ~= 9200, lots of them might have bought an X1000, a ZT3000, or an NX7000 specifically because of this "better" graphics chip.
Lastly, I'm not an advocate of frivolous lawsuits, but in this case, where literally thousands of consumers have been deliberately tricked (unless HP/Compaq can somehow prove it was a mistake that these machines were being loaded with 9000s), I think that if HP/Compaq is not willing to issue a refund or replacement notebook (with a 9200!) to anyone who was fooled, they should be taken to court in class-action.
As consumers, we cannot allow companies to use deceptive marketing tactics in order to sell their products. That is, unless you want to live in a country where you need to reverse-engineer everything you buy just to see if you actually are buying what is advertised.
I've always thought that we made a rather serious mistake back in the 1830's when Caveat Emptor was allowed to become the legal standard. Prior to that it was assumed that there would be "Fair Dealing". Obviously there are flaws with the fair dealing standard (who defines "fair" just to begin with), but in the nearly 200 years we've been operating with Cateat Emptor it hasn't worked out too well for Joe Average.
The main problem is the double standard, if Joe Average messes up (fails to read fine print, actually expects a product to behave as advertised, etc) he not only gets reamed, he's expected to bring his own vasaline. When Foo Corp messes up (prints "incorrect" prices, etc) they don't get reamed; usually they're allowed to get away with saying "oops, we made a mistake, you really can't buy a computer for $50". And that's a serious problem. Personally I'd rather we went to a standard that *didn't* encourage corporations (and people) to look for tiny mistakes that can be used to ream someone, but if that's the way we want to play it the system needs to work in reverse too.
On a more on topic note, I'm pretty sure that Caveat Emptor doesn't apply anyway, it sounds more like a case of false advertising to me. The ads and the box say "Now includes *FOO*", but the fine print defines "foo" to mean "bar". If that's legal, it shouldn't be.
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Sure, but HP would have honestly called it a 9000, not a 9200, unless they thought they'd gain something by lying. If they wanted to say, "Yeah, it's a 9000, but you don't really need the 9200," they should have said so.