I’ve had my screen (purchased separately) for about 18 months.  I have a vertical blue line.  I am frustrated as I know it will cost me more to fix it than to replace it.  Throw away technology is the pits.  boooo.

Submitted by Ted.

I’ve had my HP Pavilion ZD827ea for about 5-6 years and the only problem that I have had is that the battery died after about 2 years, although the screen has recently started to display vertical colored pinstripes, so I guess its dying.
I have written to HP before about how to remove the cabinet so that I could upgrade the CPU as it would be cheaper to upgrade the whole machine than buy new. I was totally impressed with the reply as they were glad that I was happy with there product and sent me a complete service manual for free.
Unlike Fujitsu Siemens Who haven’t even have the decency to reply to several E-Mails about a problem I have with one of there machines.
So summing up I have owned several laptops and HP are without any doubt the best machines in my experience.

Submitted by Tim.

Hello,

I have an HP pavilion zd8000. It’s now about 5 and a half year old. At the moment it isn’t working very well, he is very slow and my battery in the pc is broken. So if i remove the cable… he fells out. Very stupid if you PC is slow and more stupid if you battery charger is also broken!!! It got broken twice!! And i had to wait at least 14 days and it cost me  about 100 euros each time.

And about 10 days ago, suddenly a smal line appeared. And i thought “What is going on?” i have rebooted my pc, did a virus scan but nothing worked.  Ok 1 line isn’ bad. But a few days later a new line appeared. This is not normal!!!

I searched the internet and they said: ” You can’t fix it and it’s getting worse!!!” Stupid HP!!! this pc costs me 1599 Euros, about 1500$ i think.  If you count the battery chargers it was 1700 euros.

Really i hate HP. Why didn’t they make a better pc! This pc was in my eyes not 1500 euros worth! I will never buy a HP again.

Sorry if there are any mistakes in my text. I come from Belgium, where they speak Dutch and French

Greetz
Thomas

Submitted by Thomas De Sterck.

Greetings from London, and firstly

My heart goes out to each and every one of you

It DOES really vacuum when some nice shiny piece of technology turns out to be totally unfit-for-purpose, due to some easily fixable design issues, and a procedural Corporate arrogance, that stops real problems from ever being acknowledged

A bit of background might be in order, of how we got here

“Back in the day” HP grew to become the makers of the finest electronic test & measurement gear money could buy you might want to see some of the writings of the original founders (read them and weep: -

http://www.smecc.org/the_human_side_of_management_-_bill_hewlett.htm

http://www.hpalumni.org/images/Packard_11_Simple_Rules.jpg )

From a really small operation that genuinely engaged with its people to .. Well, partly due to the 21st Century’s way of doing business, employing MBA’s for the top spots of a Company who have no feel or knowledge of the technology or end product – and lousy communication skills  (Sorry is my bitterness from working at an early DotCom showing here ?)

Through the 80′s and 90′s HP still made some very advanced, competent stuff – but the turn of the century’s appointment of CEO Carly Fiorina (http://www.cnbc.com/id/30502091?slide=3) and the disastrous acquisition of Compaq http://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/catalogue/Business%20Strategy1/The%20HP-Compaq%20Merger%20Story.htm , the stock price in the toilet, and the layoff of 18,000 technical staff, well…

Maybe I’m being myopic, but the ONE thing I fail to understand, is her decision to divest the HP name from all the serious T&M gear (becoming ‘Agilent’, a separate company) If ANYTHING gave you a bit of confidence in a gray insubstantial looking computer or peripheral, it would be that it shares some parentage with the finest electronic gear on the planet – (WHAT do they TEACH these alleged ‘managers’, about ‘branding’ ?)

This sure was the end of the ‘HP Way’, of Bill & Dave’s simple people-centric, tech savvy style of management – Oh Fiorina did a FEW things right – the early pavilion PC’s had the names of the techs who designed it stamped on the box, to encourage ‘pride’ – sadly she’d sourced some of the cr*ppiest cheap motherboards for most of the line (causing one of my customers a whole WORLD of trouble) and really WASN’T something a self-respecting hardware geek would like to be associated with

I had a neighbor worked for HP around this time, and there was some SERIOUS partying in 2005 when she got forcibly ejected from the Board (entered politics now, I believe)

OK I’m currently struggling with a friends ZD8000 with a melted charger (is it REALLY worth sourcing another one, with this machines rep, and The ZD7000 having its very own Class Action ? http://www.classcounsel.com/news/hpzd.html

sadly ANY tech buy is a bit of a crapshoot these days – IBM’s used to be really well made, but the Chinese Lenovo’s can be a bit .. variable in quality, so its hard to recommend ANYBODY that heartily – (Samsungs build quality has gotten a lot better these days, mind)

All I can advise is  try and be TOO early-adopter with tech purchases, hold back a few months, read plenty reviews, and if you have issues after buying, take notes,  record conversations if you can, and remain clam, try every inane thing the ‘support’ suggests, whilst politely rebutting any insane claims such as ‘playing games overclocks your computer’

(Oh and if anyone DOES have the wreckage of their 8000, maybe a charger or something for yours truly..?)

Finally – Bill Hewlett’s ideas on management still live on – Only not at HP !

“a core ideology … which includes a deep respect for the individual, a dedication to affordable quality and reliability, a commitment to community responsibility, and a view that the company exists to make technical contributions for the advancement and welfare of humanity.”[49] The following are the tenets of The HP Way:[50]

1. We have trust and respect for individuals.
2. We focus on a high level of achievement and contribution.
3. We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.
4. We achieve our common objectives through teamwork.
5. We encourage flexibility and innovation….”

RB

Submitted by Roger B.

I paid over $1600 for this laptop 3 yrs ago (or was it 4 now..?)
Anyway, after 6 months the battery failed and I had to buy a new one.
Then about a year ago, all of a sudden it wouldn’t boot up (of course,
out of warranty by then).

HP offered to fix anything wrong for a flat $400, and put in a new
motherboard. A couple of months ago I started seeing the dreaded
“vertical line” disease… Now my daughter’s laptop, which is 1 month
out of warranty, will not boot up at all…. sigh….

Submitted by Chip.

The following issues with our laptop.  Keyboard failing, battery life minimal, power supply failed, overheats very easily, and today the lcd display failed.  All in all the worst laptop we’ve ever owned.  A complete POS.

Submitted by Unhappy.

I have been a long time HP customer, and until recently had no problems with my hp hardware.  Then the “fun” began.  I had a dv8315nr but needed a more portable solution to travel with.  I purchased the HP2133 mini-note at a cost of over 800.00.  Shortly after I purchased the mini, the larger laptop began to disconnect from power and drop to battery whenever it was under load. Unplugging the power cable at the pc then plugging it back in would help for awhile. As soon as it went under load however, it would drop to battery again.

Since I had the extended warranty on it, I sent it to hp for repair.  They sent it back promptly, after diagnosing it as a “bad battery” and replacing the battery.  I could not get them to understand it was NOT the battery, they just kept telling me it was fixed and the battery solved it.  Ultimately the warranty ran out and the problem was still there. So, I now had a laptop that would only stay connected to AC if you did not put the processor under any load or use the CD/DVD drive. Great.  But, at least I had the mini.  (After some recent research, I found the problem is in the power jack, a 24.00 part that does not even have to be soldered in on the 8315.  And yes, it is a very common problem among hp laptops)

Then the mini died one day, two months out of warranty.  Just would not boot up one day. After some research, it turns out that there are very many hp2133 mini-notes that are dying and becoming expensive paperweights, and the problem is a defective system board.  HP has even acknowledged that the system boards are defective.  And for the low, low price of almost 600.00, they will replace it for you (since, of course, most have failed out of warranty, usually within a three month period after the 12 month warranty expired.)  According to the many message boards about the 2133′s problem, for those that failed during the warranty, the replacement board also failed, generally within a few months.

The day the mini died, but before I knew the full extent of the problem with the hp support issue, and because I had to have a new laptop right away for both school and my business, against my husband’s better judgment, I bought another hp laptop at Best Buy. (Sometimes I am a slow learner)

Within 5 months, the hard drive failed on that machine.  One of the USB ports will not function and the other two are flaky at best.  I contacted Best Buy for warranty repair and was told they could fix it under warranty, but it would take 7-14 days unless I wanted to pay a rush charge of 150.00 for a 3 day turnaround.  The manager tried to explain to me the amount of time (at least a full day, maybe two)  it was going to take to reinstall all the software on the laptop and was a bit…ummmm….flustered when I stopped him mid-sentence and told him to stop lying to me, that it generally takes a maximum of 3 hours to reimage the drive from the standard image they have for the model, and that I would be happy if they would just swap out the drive and let me take it home, since I would be wiping the image and reinstalling everything clean as soon as I got it home.  Of course, they couldn’t to that…..since I could not be without a pc for that long, I just ordered a drive and put it in myself.

In short, after being a long-term hp customer, and as I am the family IT “advisor”, we had purchased a lot of hp hardware over the years.  No more.  Dell is our new buddy.

Submitted by debjax.

I purchased my HP Pavillion zd8000 for £600 2 years ago. After one year a vertical line appeared, shortly followed by another. This has now accelerated and despite little use over the last year I now have well over 100 lines on my screen. A friend of mine with a zd7000 tells me that she had a similar problem which was rectified by an automatic update 3 months ago, sadly my computer has not benefited from the same. Does any one know of a site that will have this update?

Submitted by David Bowen.

I purchased a zd7000 in 2005 for college at $2k. Sat on a desk for months until the Ethernet port fried due to heat. Replaced under warranty but out 3 weeks of having a computer at school. Over the next 4 years of ownership, I had the MOBO replaced 3 times at $500 a pop due to graphics card burnout and overheating. The DVD drive stopped working and replaced at $150. It never left my desk except Holidays and moving dorms. When I graduated, I sold the computer for $100 and received my father-in-law’s HP Pavilion zd8015 for free as he went with Mac. His was only 2 years old at the time. Again, in the past year, I have had to replace the MOBO twice and keep it on a cooling pad on the desktop. Two usb ports are inoperable and I can’t keep a wireless card working in it as they continuously overheat and fry out. I would love to see some action taken against HP for this series as this should not be “Buyer Beware” after a company is recognized for a faulty product. Finally bought a MacBook Pro with Boot camp/Parallels and I couldn’t be happier.

Submitted by Mike.

I have an HP HDX X16, a little over a year old. Few months ago when booting up I would get a black screen while the hard drive and all the sounds and lights powered up correctly. I had to wait first for the boot-up process to complete then I would close and open the lid and the desktop screen would appear. This went on for months. Now today when I boot-up, again it starts with the black screen but when I open and close the lid I get a fuzzy screen with vertical lines, impossible to see anything beyond this. However, when I attach an external monitor via VGA cable everything on the external monitor is perfect.. I’m trying to figure out what is the cause of this issue, I’ve seen similar, but not exactly the same issues, referring to the issue being the fault of a bad inverter, and many say something about a heat problem on the motherboard affecting the video chip. I heard talks of a faulty lcd cable. You name it. Even heard of solutions using a penny and heat to solder something on the motherboard. Can anyone who’ve had this exact issue and have had it taken care of provide me with some advice or direction, or any skilled technician who have worked on it? My OS is Win 7, computer is an HDX16 1040US, out of warranty of course. Thanks in advance.

Submitted by ChipsAtroy.