HP Recall on 900,000 Notebooks

phycoman writes "900,000 HP and Compaq laptops have potential memory issues and are being recalled. The RAM chips from four manufacturers can possibly lead to system corruption and lockups. The affected notebooks are Compaq Evo Notebook N610c, Compaq Evo Notebook N610v, Compaq Evo Notebook N620c, Compaq Evo Notebook N800c, Compaq Evo Notebook N800v, Compaq Evo Notebook N800w, Compaq Evo Notebook N1000c, Compaq Evo Notebook N1000v, Compaq Presario 1500, Compaq Presario 2800, Compaq Presario x1000, Compaq Presario x1200, HP Compaq Business Notebook nx7000 and HP Pavilion zt3000. As a result, HP has created a website whick allows users to download a program to test for faulty RAM chips."

Comments

Channelling Nelson

[philoticjane]

/me points at HP

HA ha... /me looks at apple.com... scrolls to bottom... "Extended iBook Logic Board..."

Oh. Damn.

HP= bad

[spacerodent]

Every time I've bought an HP product I've regreted it. I even got one of their dvd burners for a mere $99 year before last (when they were ~$300 normally) and then when it broke only 3 weeks after I bought it they said it wasn't covered under warrenty. They claimed that it was covered for 1 year or until they decide the product is obsolete and no longer will be supported. Even though i'd just bought it they had decided it was too long to support any longer dispite the fact that it was still on store shelves. Then last year I got a HP 935 digital camera as a gift. It was a good little camera except for one thing. The batteries only lasted about 2-3 picutres at a time. You could wait for the amperage to build back up between sets of 2-3 pictures (usually a few minutes) but thats totally unacceptable to most people. Terrible designs and business decisions like these have destroyed any support I had left for HP. I know it's HP-Compaq now but hell would freeze over before I buy anything off them.

Re:HP= bad

[rasteroid]

I can't believe this, a company is proactive in issuing a product recall and all you can do is think about all your bad experiences that you've had in the past? It seems to me like the problems you list are not uncommon across almost every company selling tech products across the industry. In any case, your post is quite irrelevant, because it appears that the problem regarding the memory is an industry-wide problem, not an HP-specific one.

I take it as a good thing that HP is first to recall such a large volume of shipped products, whereas look what their main competitors in the laptop segment are up to - Dell is still "evaluating" and I've no idea what IBM is up to.

It's a shame that the recall isn't issued by the memory/chipset manufacturers themselves, since they are primarily responsible for the flaw, even though laptop vendors in general are also somewhat responsible for letting the flaw go unnoticed for so long.

HP doesn't have a perfect track record, but give credit where credit is due. A company that issues a comprehensive product recall, despite it being an "industry-wide problem" and despite it probably being something relatively minor/obscure (which is why it escaped detection for so long), is one that to me cares more for their products than what you've described above.

I myself am primarily a Dell customer (which isn't saying much), but I give HP the edge in being more proactive in this particular case. For all you know, they could have just shrugged their shoulders and pointed fingers at the memory/chipset manufacturers.

Regarding monetary losses, I'm sure there is some sort of sharing of cost-of-replacement between the various companies responsible for this product recall.

Missed it

[Papa Legba]

Sometimes a guy lucks out. I bought a 1500 not to long ago. I got it with the minimum amount of RAM in it. I wanted a gig of RAM but HP wanted almost $700 for that upgrade. I decided that upgrading the screen was far more important as I could not alter that myself later at a cheap price.

As soon as I got the laptop I orderd a gig of third party RAM from an online vendor, total cost less than $200. Installed it right away and now I don't have this problem and never have had it.

Moral of the story: Sometime it pays to be a cheap bastard.

Re:Missed it

[anticypher]

So you take your original HP 128 Meg sodimm card, mail it back to them, get a new one, and a 32Mbyte USB flash memory key with an HP logo on it for the cost of postage.

It pays to be a cheap bastard, but one should be a greedy cheap bastard whenever possible.

the AC

Memory replacement, not recall

[Covener]

Laptops aren't being recalled, memory is. Writeup is too sensationalized

Re:HP

[JPriest]

P installs a crapflood of memory resident programs to handle even the most mundane tasks

Funny you mention that, a just threw a default install of XP Pro on an old 450MHz AMD box next to me. I was amazed to see on boot it used only 56 megs of RAM. Having mostly used OEM versions, I always figured XP was more bloated than that.

Intel chipset to fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to believe that the memory makers who hold 70% of the world market fail to produce their stuff to specs.

Looks more like a flaw with the Intel chipsets in those notebooks, but that would be much more expensive to replace.

If you're affected, check whether the new RAM modules aren't slower than the ones you're replacing.

free 32MB flash drive

[justforaday]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the free 32MB flash drive you get for their screwup.

HP will provide one free 32-megabyte USB Flash Device for each notebook identified as having affected memory module(s). To receive this incentive, customers must complete all of the following steps for each notebook:

Order the replacement memory module(s) through this Web site.

Replace the affected memory module(s) without the assistance of a service partner or HP.

Return the affected memory module(s) as directed.

I get the feeling there're going to be a lot of flash drive RAIDs being made out of these...

Not the real HP anymore

[uncadonna]

Everything I've encountered from HP in the last several years (certainly anything post-Carly) has been amazingly failure-prone. I've been foolish enough, on the strength of old habits and low prices, to buy a laser printer, and a desktop machine from them since then. Both failed very quickly. The institutional setting where I work has a departmental color laser, much higher end than I've ever purchased for myself. Its downtime approaches 50%; it has no less than three types of chronic problems (paper feed, intermittent connectors, and some peculiar software glitch than can be power cycled away). We are looking for a replacement and will not consider an HP machine. I paid out of pocket for a cheap USB lexmark laser in my office so I could get listings and get my work done.

This may be a coincidence but I doubt it.

I'm old enough to remember a time when HP products were ubiquitous in labs and scientists' offices. In those days they were paragons of good design and reliability.

Folger's used to be a brand associated with gourmet coffee. Once the brand got bought out, it was used in a sort of goodwill mining operation to sell vile instant coffee crystals.

This is the way of the publicly traded corporation with its short time horizons. A respected brand is just a resource to be cashed in.

Re:Not the real HP anymore

[Foolhardy]

I remember when HP used to represent quaility too. HP oscilliscopes, spectrum analyzers, calculators were sought after. There is old HP equipment still in use around here from 20+ years ago that still works great; pieces of equipment that have never had parts break.
Of recent products: I have an HP48GX calc that is working beautifully. I have a cheapo deskjet printer that works OK; the ink prices are murder and a third party cartridge seems to have plugged some the heads causing streaks. It's still much better than the Epson color stylus 2 I had before. I also have a ZT1000 notebook computer, about 2 years old. I've had a few issues, but overall it is very stable.
I agree that their quaility has gone down a great deal recently (with Carly+merger mostly).

About companies that don't care about long-term reputation, only short-term profits: I worry that it is going that way too. Still, the implicit purpose of most corps is to make money for the investors.

From HP's website:

[ikea5]

Program Highlights: The Memory Module Replacement Program showcases HP's unique capabilities to detect, and identify complex issues, and globally execute customized replacement programs.

Translate: "We shipped some faulty chips, which caused bluescreens, now we will send a screw driver to everyone on our list so they can replace it themself"

HP=Pinto

[CaptainFrito]

"Laptops aren't being recalled, memory is. Writeup is too sensationalized"

"Ford Pintos aren't being recalled, gas taks are. Writeup is too sensationalized"

Uh-huh.

Re:HP

[Realistic_Dragon]

Just like the real player thing*, it seems that Linux users get the better deal on drivers and crapware.

HP Linux drivers (for the printers at least, I havent used the camera ones) are solid, HP backed, support things like the card readers and have no crapware attached.

There seem to be quite a few cases where Linux drivers and software are actually _better_ than the Windows versions.

*Real player for UNIX is a pretty decent piece of software.

Not HPs fault

[phalse phace]

I just love how everyone's bashing HP for this flaw even if it isn't their fault.

"The problem is tied to the interaction of DRAM from several manufacturers and several chip sets, all designed by Intel Corp."

Shouldn't HP be commended instead since they're the only ones who are currently taking action to resolve this problem?

"Although HP classified the problem as one that will affect the notebook PC industry as a whole, it appears that the company is the only one currently taking action. A representative from Dell Computer Corp. said that the company was "looking into it.""

Re:Downtime anyone?

[silas_moeckel]

Nope HP ships the part you replace and then you ship back the defective part and they ship you a 32 meg usb flash drive for your trouble and returning the bad ram.

Always test the memory!

[Doppler00]

Whenever I buy a new computer or new memory, I always run it through a memory tester I boot from a CD. It's good to run one of these for at least 24 hours. If you find any memory problems, you might want to return the product.

It's also fun to benchmark it after the tests are done. I used SiSoftware Sandra BenchmarkHQ.

One thing to look out for though is BIOS programs that load into memory addresses that will effect the test. I kept getting errors until I disabled my onboard IDE RAID controller, and then the memory checked out fine. I guess the controller was loading something into the memory and the test would read it back after the controller changed it.