Faulty Graphics Processor the Culprit for Failing Notebooks
Thousands of HP and Dell notebook owners have experienced the frustration of realizing that their new notebooks are doorstops just a few months outside of the standard 1-year warranty. Some believe that these companies have somehow devised a way to make this happen on purpose, like a timebomb set to go off just outside of the warranty. Many people have little choice but to speculate as to why their notebooks, along with several hundred others like them, would fail two or three months outside of the warranty. The real reason for this issue, however, is the Nvidia graphics processor, which is overheating enough to fry the motherboard. According to Nvidia, the failure rate of these chips is so high that the company had to take a $196 million charge against their earnings in the second quarter of its 2008 fiscal year, in anticipation of the money it would take to cover the reimbursements they may have to pay. Nvidia did ultimately release another chip without this particular malfunction, to be put into the newest versions of Dell and HP notebooks.
Especially frustrating to owners of these notebooks is the initial behavior of Dell and HP. According to Windows Secrets, they have either charged their customers for the repairs or refused to service them at all because they were past the warranty service. Allegedly, they also continued to sell more notebooks containing the faulty chip long after they became aware of the problem. These notebooks failed at 18 months on average, shortly after the warranties had expired. Many owners called Dell or HP and yelled at telephone support technicians that did not have the power to resolve the issue. Of course, yelling at the technicians got these customers nowhere, and as a result, some customers came up with another way to get HP and Dell to hear their complaints. They created blogs, such as one called “HP Lies”, and they explained their displeasure on the Internet to get some attention. These heated blogs pressured HP and Dell to list the defective model numbers on their websites and extend their warranties for that specific problem. Instead of recalling these defective products, they sent out a “patch” for the problem, according to Windows Secrets. This “fix” caused the notebook fans to run continuously to try to cool down the graphics card that was still overheating, sucking the battery life from the notebooks and slowly melting the motherboard anyway. This is leaving customers even more angry and frustrated. If you own a Dell or HP and think it may have this issue, bring it in to cat-man-du for a free check and some free advice.
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