Not so long ago in land very similar to our own lived a naive young prince unbeknownst to ways of this world. All he sought was a small chest from a land far far away. Little did know that it was guarded by a evil monster, well actually a corporation of evil monsters who had already planned to turn his dream into a nightmare hotter than Satan's fire.This is his story.
Well not really.This is just a story of an unsuspecting customer who bought what a certain company by the name HP (May the Good Lord [or the 330 million I believe in] sue their pants off) advertised to be a laptop. Little did the poor kid realize the engineering department at HP had put their green thinking hats on. They had designed the world's first battery powered portable toaster which would let you check your email. Realising that it would be hard to sell it to any market segment from right wing scientologists to morbidly obese transvestites, they decided to label this awesome new line of products as the dv series laptops. Now the real trick lay in making it look and feel like a real laptop. So you had a CPU, the LCD, the other usual frills and add ons but the real trick was the GPU.
So how did the infinite genius design this masterpiece? Well it was really simple. A leaked HP memo provides a stepwise set of instructions to follow for such design.
1. Tear your engineering degree into little pieces until you cant make the pieces any smaller.
2. Order a litre of beer for every piece of paper you now have.
3. Sit at your desk and drink it all at one go.
4. Now start work.
So what was the result?
A brand new HP toaster (or make believe laptop) that has a GPU but not a heatsink! Oh no but it doesnt end there. There is only one cooling fan for both a dual core processor and the GPU. The GPU does not even touch the metal sink, all it is in contact with is some silly heat pad.
So what's the big deal you ask? It must a tad hot. Big deal. Well it does get a bit hot. Sometimes hot enough to boil water. Some of my friends inform me thats the temperature at which most of my food cooks. Heres a screenshot for your benefit.
Well a little heat I am fine with, but the real fun starts when the substrate on which the GPU is built begins to fail at these thermal stresses. So what does this gibberish translate to in simple English? I get six screens for the price of one. Yup, thats right, the GPU malfunctions at this temperature and renders 6 screens. I have not yet mustered the courage to take a screenshot when that happens but soon I will.
Ya I know what you're thinking, so what you have 6 screens atleast you can continue work! Apart from the fact that you are clinically retarted if that was what you thought, the other important issue is a complete GPU failure in which the screens either blanks out or is filled with complete gibberish. Also add a few Blue Screens of Death when the CPU overheats because of the single fan and yes my life is set. I am the not so proud owner of a 1000$ toaster.
Btw HP has a fantastic customer service policy you might want know about as well. The combined experience of few other toaster owners hints at the following action plan at the HP end.
1. Tell user to do a ridiculous bios update which keeps the fans on at all times.
2. If problem persists refuse to acknowledge it and make the customer perform a series of completely unrelated tasks such as jumping through fiery hoops.
3.Wait till the warranty runs out.
4. Ask him to pay 400$ for a repair and then offer a 200$ repair and sucker him into agreeing.
5. Once he is suckered replace the old faulty motherboard with a new faulty motherboard with the exact same flaw. UNDERCLOCK the GPU below the HP official rating for the processor.
(HP has this policy that your case is upgraded if the same flaw recurrs within 3 months and your laptop must be replace after 3 upgrades. So the repair is aimed at getting the system to run for 3 more months)
6. Repeat process till customer moves to a different company, runs out of cash or commits suicide.
If you have just realised that you too are the proud owner of an HP toaster here's what you can do.
1. Visit the following link and get yourself informed: www.hplies.com
2. Inform other unfortunate souls like yourself.
3. Sue the bastards.
A Not So Proud Owner of an HP laptop,
Model: dv2500
GPU: nVidia 8400 Ms
