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NVIDIA Gets Away With Bait-and-Switch
racquetballguy writes "As part of a December 2010 settlement agreement, NVIDIA agreed to provide all owners of laptops containing a defective NVIDIA GPU with a laptop of similar kind and value. In February, NVIDIA announced that a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 would be provided as a replacement to all laptops — from $2500 dual-core tablet PCs to $2000 17" entertainment notebooks. Ted Frank, from the Center for Class Action Fairness, filed an objection to the court, which was overruled by Judge Ware today. Once again, the consumers of a class action lawsuit lose."
As a matter of course, you should always opt out of being part of the class. The settlements are rarely very big, and usually the company is better off if it can get everyone into the class and give up their individual rights to litigate.
This one has to go over the judge's head.
Except 99% of people in the class aren't going to sue anyway, so they gain nothing by opting out. I just got $16 from a Comcast Bitorrent blocking class-action lawsuit, which is more than I would have gotten otherwise.
is getting pretty long.
that they didn't just get a gift certificate for a cup of McDonalds coffee.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Who the heck spends $2500 on a tablet PC?
Someone who bought a tablet PC, not an iPad or Xoom. It's a miniaturized laptop with a flip-around touchscreen. Expensive hardware.
Pretty much anyone who bought a tablet before the iPad came out.
seriously the average tablet computer back then was $2000 if you wanted a 10" screen or larger.
It is why every other company thought Apple would come out with the iPad for $1000 or so since they are a premium brand name and always charge more. The $499 price forced everyone back to the drawing board which is why 1 year later there is only one decent competitor and it will be another 6 months before a second actually hits the market.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
which was overruled by Judge Ware today
Is his first name Hard?
A class action is NEVER about making he victims whole. It's about punishing the offending corporation. Period.
If you ever go into a class action thinking you're going to gain something personally, you're an idiot. (Unless, of course, you're a lawyer.)
Since this is slashdot, I'll try to make a poor analogy. It's like the geeks and nerds at a school hiring a freelance bully to take care of their local bully. The nerds and geeks shouldn't expect to get anything out of it except a cessation of hostile activity from their local bully. The freelancer gets to keep the bulk of whatever he manages to recover from the local bully. He may get the bully to agree to give a candy bar to every kid in the school but the geeks and nerds aren't going to recover multiple years' worth of lunch money. The goal is to prevent future bad behavior on the part of the local bully and nothing more.
So some 3 year old HP laptops that cost a lot back then are being replaced by $350 HP laptops now. Normally a 3 year laptop can't even be sold for $350 (unless it's a top of the line Apple model - and these aren't). And what about the specs? Nowhere in TFA is a comparison of the specs of the system being offered with the specs of the original systems.
From TFA, a lawyer and an expert witness for the people suing NVIDIA actually agreed the systems were broadly equivalent. Maybe they needed an expert witness who was either more expert or less honest.
Where exactly is the bait? Or the switch? I guess the article was submitted by one of people who expected his 3 year old system with something that costs the same now, so he could have a substantial improvement in performance.
The iPad does not compete with devices like the ThinkPad x-series tablet and the Latitude XT. People who needed tablet PCs for real work still need tablet PCs for real work, because the iPad isn't a computer and doesn't run the specialized software people bought tablet PCs before.
Of course when Jobs starts banging on about the iPad controlling 80% of the tablet market, he's conveniently omitting convertibles like the above ThinkPad, which likely make up 90%+ of PC tablet sales.
The difference being of course that the iPad is a large cellphone, while tablet PCs are PCs in tablet form. Completely different hardware and capabilities.
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
I'll bet a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 that the lawyers are well paid.
Yes, they are still branded as HP's low-end laptops. You can find them in any Office Depot, usually under $400.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Holy shit, that's a real model name? Jesus Christ.
I got lucky. My Dell laptop with a nice dual 8800M-GTX (SLI) card in it failed in a very interesting way. It would boot up in 2D just fine (I could boot in safe mode, and I could get to the login screen), but the instant it started up 3D, it would either lock up or bluescreen (an interesting one - it wasn't the usual BSOD, just one that said something like "Hardware parity error")
Thankfully I bought the 4 year extended on-site warranty, so I simply called Dell, faked through their OS restore procedure (same effect - though it gets as far as the testing 3D performance step before it locks up - I already tried it).
I had them also send the tech a replacement graphics card as well, and told them to replace that first. Half an hour later, it was working great.
Thank god for extended warranties. I usualy get them for laptops because heat failures are common... and probably one of the few times an extended warranty makes sense.
This is why my standard response when I receive notice of a class-action settlement is to return the paperwork with the "I decline to participate in the class" boxes checked. If you don't respond, you're considered part of the class and are bound by the terms of the settlement. By declining I preserve my right to make my own claim against the company.
The laptops with this nvidia were sold defective, and it was spotted RIGHT AWAY. Nvidia lied about the parts not being defective and refused replacement. That is why there is a lawsuit. The lawsuit has taken 3 years, so of course you can't replace these laptops with the exact model anymore. It's stupid to even offer replacements at this point, so this should be a cash settlement instead.
Since nvidia parts aren't usually sold in laptops that cheap, the refund should be much higher. This isn't about getting something new three years later. It's about something that should have immediately been covered under warrenty and recalled especially since they knew they were bad. Intel has had bad silicon before, and did the right thing!
Sorry, but let's face it, any kind of integrated nvidia gpus is massively superior to any of the intel gpus, or whatever is the appropriate term for those integrated graphics chips.
I think the correct term you're looking for is 'waste of PCB real-estate.'
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Holy shit, that's a real model name? Jesus Christ.
How else do you differentiate it from an EEE TM101MT-EU38-BK ?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
My Macbook Pro had one of the offending NVIDIA chips. When it failed out of warranty Apple simply replaced it. They didn't send me to NVIDIA for a solution. I assume they hammered NVIDIA to get their money back for the replacement part. The OEM computer manufacturers are always going to have more leverage with their suppliers than you or I will. Responsible vendors should shield the end user from this sort of pettiness and finger pointing. After all, you didn't buy your laptop from NVIDIA...
Here's the problem with small claims court. You're responsible for collecting your own judgements. If you're suing "Bob's Restaurant and Bar," you can show up with a deputy and clean out the cash registers if necessary. If you're suing "Bob's Auto Yard," you can show up with a deputy and seize a car off the lot. If you're suing Bob, you can garnish Bob's wages.
Suing a multinational corporation is a somewhat different affair. If they don't have seizable assets within your jurisdiction, and they decide to blow off your judgement, your options rapidly dwindle. Once they decide to appeal, you find yourself in Big Boy court paying your own legal fees and any victory you might have had instantly becomes pyrrhic...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Uh... I disagree. Provided you have a decent mouse-binding to the touchscreen, mouse apps are generally perfectly usable with a touchscreen or Wacom Penabled-style tablet.
In the case of the former, you need to bind right-click to touching the screen for 0.5-1.0s, and left click to quicker taps.
In the case of the latter, a right-click modifier button on the pen will do fine.
Aside from that, perhaps add some drag detection in select apps and set that up for scrolling. Just about all you need.
I think the only reason they didn't take off is because of cost - Who wants a fragile transformer for 2x the cost of a regular laptop?
The offered machine may be a bit better than the one it's replacing, but most software has got a lot heavier in the intervening time. In terms of what's being asked of it, the replacement is worse.
The vast majority of defective machines have better specs than the replacement machine. A 3 year old laptop with a dual-core 2.2 GHz processor (AMD Turion 64 x2 TL-64 processor in many of the defective machines) is still faster than a single-core 2.3 GHz processor (AMD V140 in CQ56). Moreover, the replacement lacks just about every feature present on the defective machines (the CQ56 doesn't even have a webcam).
I sent in my claim and was shocked at what they claimed was "similar value". I am not going to even bother sending mine in. I am sure that will make NVidia happy. Except that I will never buy another product with the NVidia stink attached to it. I am not likely to buy anything HP either.
A convertible isn't a tablet. It is a notebook with a touch screen. All convertibles only have 2-3 applications which use the touch interface the rest you need the keyboard/mouse for.
I have a convertible on which I loaded standard Windows 7. It works fine in every program. You certainly don't need custom applications. The OS comes with support for system wide gestures, on screen keyboard (a choice of two actually) and handwriting recognition. It does more than duplicate the mouse.
A new econobox 15" laptop is not even close to equivalent to a three-year-old high-end ultraportable. Or a three-year-old 17" gaming laptop. Or a three-year-old tablet PC. Or even a three-year-old high-end 15" office laptop. It's dishonest to suggest that because the new econobox has comparable benchmarks, that it's a comparable system. Laptops are more complicated than that. The econobox has nowhere near the same utility.
If you disagree, try lugging it through an airport instead of the older ultraportable, or try holding it in one hand to take inventory instead of the older tablet. See how much good the extra PCMarks do you.
Also, what kind of laptops are you buying that cost $2000 but can't be sold for $350 three years later? I bought a three-year-old high-end ThinkPad for a friend for $750 recently. Cost twice as much as a new econobox, benchmarks were worse, but it was still a great deal for a far better user experience.
I mostly agree with you, but there is still something to be said for class actions: they are one of the only things encouraging corporations not to take more advantage of people than the law allows. This way, NVIDIA's costs for selling a faulty product are higher, which gives them more reason to make sure that they don't. Think of it as quality control.
We just need a way to ensure that the people who got screwed over by the company being sued don't get screwed over even more by the attorneys on the case. They tend to walk away with millions, while the people who actually lost something tend get a ridiculously paltry sum to compensate them, often with strings attached, such as being required to purchase from the same company again in order to take advantage of it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer