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.

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.

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"

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

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.