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Class Action Suit Forces Palm to Replace Dead PDAs

Posted by Zonk on from the free-toys dept.

leshert writes "After years of denying the problem with bad backup capacitors, Palm is settling a class action suit. If you have a dead Palm m100, m105, or m125, fill out the paperwork, and send it in, Palm will replace it with a new unit. No word yet on with what they'll be replacing it with, but I can imagine there are a lot of pack-rat geeks like me with one or more dead PDAs stashed away in a box."

5 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Cool by panxerox · · Score: 2, Funny

    Off to Ebay to find some dead pdas. sweet.

    --
    "It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
  2. ARGH! by TheDarkener · · Score: 5, Funny

    My fiancee had an m105 with the capacitor problem. We couldn't even get $20 at a garage sale for it, so we traded it to a friend for a bunny.

    $*(#!@ing bunnies...

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  3. Great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I've also got an IBM XT that stopped working around 1998. Hopefully someone will start a class action suit for that as well!

  4. I'm tempted by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm tempted to send it in just to get a newer unit. There's no way they'd actually replace it with the same unit. However, there is the possiblity they might just replace the capacitors. Either way, I don't think i'll lose. Now, how to make my functioning palm 100 no longer function?

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  5. Awwww right... but wait by zanderredux · · Score: 2, Funny
    Now that the "m" series has been discontinued for quite a long time, they decided to replace defective units (well, there was indeed a class action but lets ignore this for now).

    So the question is: when is Palm going to fix/replace my Zire? It has two well-known problems:

    1. Really irritating, high-pitched, brain drilling, directional noise coming off the screen This issue has been around the Palm forums for quite a long time now, but Palm continues to dismiss it as "normal". Maybe they do not have ears, but the noise - non-audible when fresh new - grows over time, and is very, very annoying.
    2. Weird, fast, sudden and utterly complete and irreversible battery drainage if you use the Zire security features Palm says nothing more than "yeah, that's the way that is" and goes on recommending that the user either neve use the feature or (worse) use a third-party application to get security timed locking to work properly. They had a now legendary KB article on this subject, that stated exactly what I said, but the said article has vanished mysteriously. That article number is just no more.

    <angry-rant>
    Palm should have a better customer support but I suspect that the Harvard-CEO-type-of-mentality must dictate that its better to wait until users get organized and push a class action than just releasing a fix for software problems (point #2), because the latter would hurt the company's image (as if the class action wasn't bad enough).
    <\angry-rant>