HP Recalls 135,000 Laptop Batteries
caffeine_monkey writes "AP is reporting that Hewlett Packard is recalling 135,000 notebook batteries because they occasionally overheat and melt. Affected models are HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario, HP Compaq and Compaq Evo. More details are on the HP support site. From their FAQ: Is it safe to buy HP notebooks? Absolutely. HP fully stands behind the products it makes."
So they foresee that all future batteries until 20005 will need to be recalled?
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
"HP fully stands behind the products it makes."
Possibly with a big plate of chobham armor in-between?
Notice it's 'buy' rather than 'use'! No wonder they can state it so definitely.
At a safe distance of 50-100 feet.
Q: I don't speak Hindi, can I still call Tech Support?
A: No.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
notebook... usually in the lap... not a good place for it to be if the batts overheat and melt.... "honey, know all that money we were wasting on birth control? wont need it anymore...."
don't make me laugh.
I am always fixing peoples PCs, I don't mind, most of the time it's drivers or spyware. I had a good friend come over two weeks ago with a Compaq presario 1000 (compaq now owned by HP and HP responsible for their products).
The (slightly over 1 year old) laptop would not turn on. No response at all, when you hit the power, it made the tiniest of 'whirrs' and did nothing. So I guessed it was a broken Video card or bad ram. It was something I wasn't going to touch anyway. I decided just on a whim (while we waited for the kettle to boil) to google. Turns out this is a very common problem with this X1000 model. Compaq used over-clocked 9000 ATI cards driven as 9200s. They overheated and over time worked themselves out of the motherboard. A quick initial fix was to press the 67Y keys very hard. I did it, and the laptop booted.
Problem is, this is not a repair, apparently the problem will repeat until that fix doesn't work. This occurred in Sweden, and in Sweden the law is if the problem is manufacturers, you have a 3 year guarantee. So my friend gets her cash back (to buy a powerbook or Toshiba on my recommendation). All the poor bastards in the US (who have a forum to complain about this issue) are out of luck, HP have ignored them. They sold mislabelled and unfit-for-purpose hardware and shafted their customers. Most of the comments I read about this (frankly terribly designed and ugly) laptop were all saying "never HP,never again".
Hp are not the company they were 10 years ago.