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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."
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.
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.
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.
I'll bet a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 that the lawyers are well paid.
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.
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!
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."
Not true. These people were without a laptop for 3 years. At the time the laptop died, it was worth $2000 and these people told nvidia: fix this mess you created. Nvidia declined and a suit was filed which took 3 years. It's not the customers fault it took so long to get justice. The day the damage was claimed against nvidia was the day the value of the item in question is determined.
If you have to sue your insurance company about your car for 3 years, the company can't continue to depreciate the amount it owes you over that time if they're found guilty..
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).
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...
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 TX1000 series which is a large portion of this suit is a convertible tablet PC. I own one of these, it was a dual-core 1.9GHz Proc, 3GB RAM, 12.1"(which is VERY portable), and had a screen that could be turned over and closed to provide a tablet. You cannot touch one of these for anywhere near the price of that Compaq being offered, nor does this "comparable" computer listed offer ANY of the features this notebook did. An iPad would be a closer fit to a Tx1000 series notebook, and even that is less of a machine and twice the cost of the Compaq.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.