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Google Halts Sales of HP's USB-Charging Chromebook 11 Over Overheating
sfcrazy writes "In a surprising and unexpected move, Google and its partners have removed the recently launched HP Chromebook 11 from shelves. Users were complaining about the issues with the trackpad and performance of the laptop." Specifically (as also reported by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer), some of the laptops have been reported to overheat.
In a surprising and unexpected move, Google and its partners have removed the recently launched HP Chromebook 11 from shelves.
There are still people in this day an age that are surprised by HP incompetence?
Haven't had any issues with my own HP Chromebook 11. Although if you use it to stream videos for several hours (4+), I've noticed that the spot on the chromebook where the battery is located gets warm. You can say that about any device, though.
If this was up yesterday before they had the reason why they were pulled we could have had rampant speculation about it being due to these machines being slow as a dog, having unresponsive input devices, or being more expensive than offerings from their competitors. I was prepared to go wildly off topic and say that HP's management interfaces are not only unintuitive, but also backdoored /. fails at posting news in a timely fashion. I didn't read the article nor the summary, but I'm sure that it contains typos and links to an article that is ad-bait and one should have linked to an article submitted days ago.
Once again
I work at a local small computer workbench. Not surprised by this at all. It seems most of HP's designs recently all overheat, or are designed to very easily. We see so many HP/Compaq's with damaged motherboards from overheating. Sometimes you can see why, hairballs in the heatsinks. Other times the heat sinks and fans look brand new. Sometimes reflowing the motherboard works, other times a new motherboard is needed, and we've even had time were new motherboards fail from the same thing a year or so later. They're junk and don't design their heatsinks and fans to the correct thermal design power of the CPU and videochipsets they're designed for. Thank god Google won't put up with their lousy designs and pulled it.
This blog spam quotes The Verge's Report from a Blog post from Google which is summaried in this post on slashdot...
How much info is summarized from google? 3 sentences:
1) Google and HP are pausing sales of the HP Chromebook 11 after receiving a small number of user reports that some chargers included with the device have been damaged due to overheating during use.
2) We are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to identify the appropriate corrective action, and will provide additional information and instructions as soon as we can.
3) In the meantime, customers who have purchased an HP Chromebook 11 should not use the original charger provided with the product.
No, I'm not talking about the overheating problem, I'm talking about the fact that using a 3rd party charger is allowed. If my HP laptop is anything to go by, I would have expected it to just detect you are using a non HP approved charger then fail to charge.
HP Chromebook 11 is selling like hotcakes!
... the recommended work-around means significantly longer charging times: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/reports-of-overheating-chargers-halt-hp-chromebook-11-sales/
Roger Murdock: Flight 2-0-9'er, you are cleared for take-off.
Captain Oveur: Roger!
Roger Murdock: Huh?
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Captain Oveur: Roger!
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Victor Basta: Request vector, over.
Captain Oveur: What?
Tower voice: Flight 2-0-9'er cleared for vector 324.
Roger Murdock: We have clearance, Clarence.
Captain Oveur: Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?
Tower voice: Tower's radio clearance, over!
Captain Oveur: That's Clarence Oveur. Over.
Tower voice: Over.
Captain Oveur: Roger.
Roger Murdock: Huh?
Tower voice: Roger, over!
Roger Murdock: What?
Captain Oveur: Huh?
Victor Basta: Who?
They let HP build it? WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?! They've been dead last in laptop quality, support quality, and hardware reliability initially and over time for over a decade. Acer beat them! Lenovo beat them! Dell beat them! Shocker, it has a defect out of the box. All HP builds is complete garbage. I found a Hitachi HDD with 8MB cache inside a $1500 elitebook from HP. They DO NOT build good laptops under any circumstances.
...this isn't getting more headlines and scandalous cries than when apple make a goof.
netbooks aren't intended for World of Warcraft.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
'And then they make the Sales Manager the CEO!'
Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor? That's Clarence Oveur. Over.
The article summary is a bit off...
It claims performance and trackpad issues, but the reason for the halted sales according the article it claims to be a summary of was the 500ma microUSB charger, which has thermal issues in the charger itself. This is kind of expected for a first attempt at an Apple-style higher amperage charger that attempts to negotiate a quicker charge rate, the same way Apple chargers do a similar thing for faster iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch device charging.
It's likely that the suggested workaround is going to cause the charging circuit not to trip, which would mean that you would need to charge with the device powered down, since you might not be able to utilize it at full power draw and still be able to charge, as you could with the factory charger. Mopst likely the overheating only happens using the factor charger while also drawing current due to the device being on.
I saw some comments on the Touchpad in various articles, which is kind of expected if you don't do the necessary addition work for the laptop EC to get the better support for the touchpad and keyboard matrix. There's actually a document describing what vendors need to do to get this right, and it generally takes either in-house engineering or at least a phone call before a vendor actually "gets it". I worked with both Samsung and Acer to make sure their Chromebook trackpads did "the right thing", based on their EC units behaviour; I'm not sure who handled it for the HP unit, but it's kinda of a well known issue when it comes to HP or Toshiba laptops with lower end touchpads, unless you work around the various issues in software.
thanks for reply http://www.varto.net/
I own both ARM based Samsung Chromebook and the newer Haswell Chromebook. Based on my experience, ARM Chromebooks are now dead on arrival thanks to Haswell. Haswell powered chromebooks are offering better battery life, superior performance and same price point ($249). My Samsung Chromebook struggles while playing 1080p youtube videos, Netflix HD videos and amazon prime videos. If you have more than 4 tabs open, things get excruciatingly slow. Contrast this with Acer Haswell Chromebook, its super fast, even with a dozen tabs open. I have thrown everything at it including 1080p youtube videos, CPU intensive flash based games (for e.g. cricket), it never struggled. Haswell and very soon Baytrail powered Chromebooks make ARM chips DOA as far as chromebooks are concerned.
As mobile devices take over, companies are under great pressure to one-up one another. Problem is, the energy contained within the batteries of these devices is no joking matter, and cannot be an issue that is constantly swept under the carpet by the careful efforts of damage-management PR companies.
We need strong laws defining and limiting the nature of chargers, batteries, power supply circuits, and battery charge monitoring circuits. No product should be allowed to hit the mass market until EVERY aspect of its high-energy power aspects have been rigorously checked for compliance.
Apple's use of un-replaceable batteries, and unrepairable products should become completely illegal. The ability of companies to put fashion ahead of engineering (by, for instance, making devices stupidly thin) should end by law.
1) All batteries in ordinary mass produced consumer items should be replaceable
2) All chargers should work to one of a number of charging standards, including standard charger plugs
3) No company should be permitted to prevent the use of standard-meeting third party chargers or batteries
4) No company should be allowed to charge batteries faster than is provably safe, or reasonable for battery life.
Do you not understand that in an unregulated world, car manufactures would force you to use THEIR proprietary make/size of tire, and pay PR shills to flood technical forums 'proving' that this was a good thing for the customer. Why should we allow Apple to get away with the same disgusting behaviour?
Apple currently pays politicians In the USA, Europe and Asia billions of dollars each year to maintain Apple friendly legal frameworks. But, while Apple is usually careful in its engineering, the wild-west that Apple's bribery maintains forces other companies into some very dubious acts, compromising the safety of customers, increasing the cost of ownership, and generally impairing use quality.
about the trackpad complaints, at least. Looks like the same one as my HeaP windows laptop and it's always registering single taps as a right click or pointer movement as scrolling.
Halt and Catch Fire