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HP Recalls 6 Million Power Cables Over Fire Hazard
Via the Consumerist comes news that HP is recalling power cables after about 30 reports that they were melting from regular use. From the article:
Hewlett-Packard received 29 reports of the melting or charring power cords, two that included claims of minor burns and 13 claims of minor property damage.
The black power cords were distributed with HP and Compaq notebook and mini notebook computers and with AC adapter-powered accessories such as docking stations and have an "LS-15" molded mark on the AC adapter.
About 5.6 million power cords were sold in the United States, while 446,700 were sold in Canada from September 2010 to June 2012 at electronic stores and hp.com.
How do you fuck something like that up?
It's not just HP that uses the LS-15 style, Acer does too for their laptops. Incoming recall for 4-6 years worth of cables coming from Acer tomorrow then?
Om, nomnomnom...
HP = Horrible Product
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I am actually impressed that 20 failures from 6 million power cords leads to a recall. Seriously, I love the fact that we have building techniques that a failure rate that low is _completely_ unacceptable :)
Humanity really does kick serious arse sometimes.
...poisonous plastics, sub par materials and thus products. i can't blame them really. it's not the workers who really profit from outsourcing all of our production.
Really, people who buy HP are worse than people who pay for porn. They're a shitty, outsourcing, cost-cutting, printer cartridge filling shell of an engineering company. If you think anything they build is good, legacy products excepted, it's because you're too stupid to see what's wrong with it.
Please tell us what is the good brand then.
Do still not forget that 20 is the amount who happened to run into problems and bothered to file a proper complaint. It is a hint that there might be actually thousands of faulty cables.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really, people who buy HP are worse than people who pay for porn. They're a shitty, outsourcing, cost-cutting, printer cartridge filling shell of an engineering company. If you think anything they build is good, legacy products excepted, it's because you're too stupid to see what's wrong with it.
Please tell us what is the good brand then.
X-Art.
9. flickering again. this time it is my campfire. A rhinoceros appears and stamps the fire out.
10. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
All too easily it seems; my first MacBook Pro power lead caught fire a few years ago as well. This was the low-voltage (hence high current) end, though: in their quest to make everything thin and light, the cable was thin and flimsy, so one of the braided conductors frayed after a while. More current going down a thinner wire meant more heat - which softened the remaining copper and made the problem worse, until arcing started and I got a micro-firework display on my desk. (One of is successors managed to melt the plastic in the plug, that didn't make me happy either!)
On the mains end, even a hefty (for laptops) 300-odd watt PSU is only 3A from a US outlet, half that on the higher voltages elsewhere - usually easy enough to deal with, but one sloppy connection and you can get a tiny point getting very hot indeed. It's worse on the low voltage end: a single cable possibly carrying 20 or more amps, while getting rolled up, folded and stood on in transit, designed to be very light weight - yet also done on a budget. As soon as you start trying to shave weight and cost, I suspect it's all too easy for a wire to be just slightly too thin for the current, or a connection to be a little bit too weak for long term mobile use.
If you were building a high school or college electronics project and said you planned to run laptop currents and voltages through such thin wires and tiny connectors, you'd probably be told off or marked down - but commercially, thin, light and cheap trump safety margins and robustness.
No more details are known. Just that some cables catched fire. Maybe they examined one of the returned ones and found out that they were not manufactured to spec or maybe the contractor reduced safety margins to a point where they become potentially dangerous. I don't think any company wants to be responsible in case someone dies.
Better to collect all the cables before more bad publicity gets generated.
Plus (other comment) most just throw away a cable if it smells funny so actualy numbers are sort of a gray area.
I've been noticing this for several years now ... what the hell is up with URLs at HP?
It's like they've designed their website so nobody could ever actually find anything.
I mean "http://h30434.www3.hp.com/" is one of the most strangely formed URLs I've seen, what is it, the virtual host or something?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
10a. Further investigation will reveal more about their nature Those were the days.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
HP's probook line is OK, other than that:
* Samsung
* Asus
* Lenovo
I'm sure we'd all love to know ... but the quality of the HP consumer products has been in decline for years now.
Their printers used to be absolutely awesome, now I rank them as right around the cheap Kodak printers you buy.
They're simply not a go-to brand any more.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It is a hint that there might be actually thousands of faulty cables.
No, its not, unless you have more info about how representative those 20 are.
Generally the ones who have problems are the "vocal minority": that is, if you have problems, you are more likely to speak up, so if you're only seeing 20 / 13million, it could well indicate that the problem is quite limited.
the actual number could be much higher, but go undetected because the user isn't drawing enough current to expose the flaw. or maybe the user just says "damn, what a cruddy power cord" and just grabs another out of his collection.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
How many users of those power cables have right now them unknowingly slightly warming up somewhere under their desk? How many users just say "darn cable, did I break it already" and just chucked in a new one? How many users have a problem coming up in following months?
Again: Without more information, all of this is wild speculation.
The world needs more facts, not more guessing.
I really wish I was making this up - I called asking about bulk replacement for my organization, and the email address they gave me was not working. So tier 1 said they would "transfer me to the team in charge of the recall." Well, I was connected with Scott, the service manager of a Chevrolet Dealership in upstate New York. Besides a good laugh, he obviously wasn't able to help me very much. *sigh*
These are 6 million ways to die?
From cpsc.gov:
Customers should immediately stop using and unplug the recalled power cords and contact Hewlett-Packard to order a free replacement. Consumers can continue to use the computer on battery power.
I must say that I am very impressed by the fast shipping!
HP products melt and catch fire ALL THE TIME. How is this news? At my repair shop we have an average of 1 HP every 6 months light on fire.
Seems a tad hysterical.
They make some decent stainless steel woodworking rasps and other woodworking tools that require some hand-work.
I have to disagree.
Sure, their cheap products are exactly as you described, but their higher end products are pretty decent. My HP Envy laptop is wonderful and great value for the price.
You get what you pay for, but generally that's true for any company, so no need to single out HP.
I agree, I work with all the major laptop brands, there is much more of a quality range within each brand than there is between brands overall. Each brand has low end crap that is junk. Each has way overpriced expensive laptops that are going for looks over function, or have three folding out touchscreens, which all end up having so many stupid features in the lightest possible setup so they end up breaking.
Can't even make a fucking power cord right anymore.
I wouldn't call it wild speculation. I'd call that a likely scenario.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Generally the ones who have problems are the "vocal minority": that is, if you have problems, you are more likely to speak up, so if you're only seeing 20 / 13million, it could well indicate that the problem is quite limited.
Sure, I'm one of those. I raised hell, on a Swedish electrical/electronics forum... Didn't even bother to call HP. I assumed it was a one off, and what are they going to do anyway? Tell me to send the cable to them? (That's too much of a hassle) and give me a new one? (I could just grab a new one from one of the conveniently situated piles at work).
In fact, the usual rule, born out by science, when it comes to customer satisfaction here in Sweden (originally talking about large enterprises like TV/Radio) is that for every complaint you have 4000 people who are dissatisfied but don't bother to make contact.
Now, of course, a recall could still be warranted even if there were only 20 out of 6 million, since there shouldn't be any at all. Compare the Challenger disaster. That the O-rings had only been eroded through a third of the way, didn't really mean that they had a safety factor of three, since they weren't supposed to erode at all! Likewise, these cables weren't supposed to melt either, and by a substantial safety margin at that. If as many as 20 do, that means that there is a systematic error somewhere.
Stefan Axelsson
So, were you going for Hewlett-PFcktard, or is your array index off by one? Or, do you use one of "those" languages where arrays are indexed starting at 1?
No, its a c++ char array.
Starts with 0. When using 'Hewlett-Pucktard' as the buffers value, the 9th value is P.
Replace with F.
Buffer[9] = 'F';
http://www.byteauthority.com/c...
Yep, its Buffer[8].
That will teach me to use slashdot before i've had my morning coffee lol