NVIDIA Gets Away With Bait-and-Switch 336
racquetballguy writes "As part of a December 2010 settlement agreement, NVIDIA agreed to provide all owners of laptops containing a defective NVIDIA GPU with a laptop of similar kind and value. In February, NVIDIA announced that a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 would be provided as a replacement to all laptops — from $2500 dual-core tablet PCs to $2000 17" entertainment notebooks. Ted Frank, from the Center for Class Action Fairness, filed an objection to the court, which was overruled by Judge Ware today. Once again, the consumers of a class action lawsuit lose."
Well that's a slap in the face. (Score:2)
Class action lawsuits are rarely good. (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except 99% of people in the class aren't going to sue anyway, so they gain nothing by opting out. I just got $16 from a Comcast Bitorrent blocking class-action lawsuit, which is more than I would have gotten otherwise.
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What exactly was the problem? "defective NVIDIA GPU" is rather vague, was this a "I can't play games at 1080 HD" defect or "WTF my screen is black!" defect?
No screen means I want every dime for my laptop since it was completely unusable, but can't play games at 1080 HD... a $300 Compaq might be sufficient.
One thing's for sure: I've changed my mind ab
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Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
This problem isn't limited to nVidia though, it is just that they have been bigger asshats about it than anyone else. ATI had a few issues, and it is also the cause of the Playstation 3 yellow light of death.
nVidia's crime was refusing to acknowledge it, then denying it, then trying to wriggle out of fixing it while still shipping defective GPUs. They ended up with millions of GPUs in the field that needed replacing, and the cost of replacement is so high that it is cheaper to ditch the whole motherboard and install a new one. That is what other companies like Microsoft have done when millions of their machines had a design flaw, and some OEMs using nVidia chips did too.
The killer for nVidia was their deal with HP. Basically they supplied about 95% of the chipsets HP used in its laptops, and so for over three years HP was shipping defective nVidia GPUs. They came to an agreement whereby nVidia would pay HP $100 per laptop, clearly not enough to replace the motherboard for a fixed one (and remember that nVidia were still shipping defective parts at the time) so they just kept swapping mobos until the warranty ran out.
For anyone in the EU remember that the legal minimum warranty period on electronics is 2 years. For anyone in the UK remember that the Sale of Goods Act requires all goods to "last a reasonable length of time", which for a laptop is generally considered to be 5 or 6 years. If your laptop is less than 5 years and and develops this fault you are entitled to either a partial refund (depending on how much use you have had from it) or a replacement.
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I mostly agree with you, but there is still something to be said for class actions: they are one of the only things encouraging corporations not to take more advantage of people than the law allows. This way, NVIDIA's costs for selling a faulty product are higher, which gives them more reason to make sure that they don't. Think of it as quality control.
We just need a way to ensure that the people who got screwed over by the company being sued don't get screwed over even more by the attorneys on the case. They tend to walk away with millions, while the people who actually lost something tend get a ridiculously paltry sum to compensate them, often with strings attached, such as being required to purchase from the same company again in order to take advantage of it.
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Class actions have worked well for me:
- $30 from the CE cartel
- $75 from Disney's baby einstein dvds
- $100 from paypal for "losses" that I never incurred
One thing I've noticed - they disguise the checks to make them look like junkmail. I almost threw the Disney check in the trash, until I realized what it was. It had no markings to indicate what it was for. (Probably done on purpose, to screw the consumer even further.) And screwing paypal was just pure pleasure.
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What would they do if you just went to small claims court?
For $2500 that seems like a reasonable place to seek relief.
Good Luck Collecting (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the problem with small claims court. You're responsible for collecting your own judgements. If you're suing "Bob's Restaurant and Bar," you can show up with a deputy and clean out the cash registers if necessary. If you're suing "Bob's Auto Yard," you can show up with a deputy and seize a car off the lot. If you're suing Bob, you can garnish Bob's wages.
Suing a multinational corporation is a somewhat different affair. If they don't have seizable assets within your jurisdiction, and they decide to blow off your judgement, your options rapidly dwindle. Once they decide to appeal, you find yourself in Big Boy court paying your own legal fees and any victory you might have had instantly becomes pyrrhic...
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I can speak from experience in this matter. My "dead beat" ex wife didn't pay for over a year, I had to outlay $2000 on a lawyer and take her to court in order to get the state to look into it, and even then, I had to request that Child Support Enforcement start collecting from her wages. It isn't as easy as you might think, and it would have been even harder if I actually depended on the income she was supposed to be paying towards the kids. This all in Maryland, which is extremely rare for the father t
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You can't appeal a small claims case and you are always responsible for collecting your own judgement.
This probably depends on jurisdiction, but I know of a small claims case that was appealed locally. The plaintiff wasn't happy that they lost and appealed against two college students who had moved across the country. Kind of an ass move.
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Luckily Norway has consumer protection laws that make such class action suits pointless.
If there is an issue with a laptop or anything else I buy I get a new product without the issue.
Hell, I get warranty replacements on stuff all the time and not once have I had to fight the company.
If the goods are meant to last more than 2 years they have a 5 year warranty by law. Fun stuff.
Appeal (Score:3)
This one has to go over the judge's head.
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I would hope something this blatant would end up with the judge not working anymore. THANKS FOR NOTHING PUBLIC SERVANT!
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Judge Ware is actually a well respected judge of the N.Dist. CA for good reasons. I don't know if he just "doesn't get the tech", but having also resided over San Jose, his docket has been filled with technology-related cases for years. I really dislike this ruling, and I'd like to research into the subject more (can't right now due to finals), but my experience based on direct knowledge is that Ware is a good judge. Nothing will happen to him due to judicial immunity, and his track record being better than
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You might want to read that Constitution again. Everyone in government, in this country, is a public servant.
I know judges, and especially Supreme Court justices, don't much care about that, but it was the point of the thing.
The list of companies to boycott (Score:2, Insightful)
is getting pretty long.
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Except Intel is one company that still builds a lot of their stuff in the U.S., unlike AMD.
That's because AMD doesn't build its own stuff. They had fabs in the US, and were in the process of building a new one in NY, but were forced to sell off their fabrication after Intel's anti-competitive practices nearly bankrupted them.
The consumers should shut up and be grateful (Score:4, Insightful)
that they didn't just get a gift certificate for a cup of McDonalds coffee.
Re:The consumers should shut up and be grateful (Score:5, Funny)
"that they didn't just get a gift certificate for a cup of McDonalds coffee."
I could pour THAT on my crotch, get a better settlement, and suffer less than I would by accepting a Compaq.
Re:The consumers should shut up and be grateful (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry man.
The way to please the mods is to link prior stories.
"They should be glad they didn't get a lousy month of service on an unsafe gaming network".
In other news... (Score:2)
...Compaq still exists.
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Compaq is a brand of HP since 2002.
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Sure, but have you ever seen a computer with a Compaq brand on it? I thought it was discontinued...?
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And is a very clever way of HP getting twice the shelf space of a retail store .. your average Joe Public thinks they are separate companies you see :-)
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They likely paid for every square inch of shelf space they have so having two seperate brands doesn't actually get them anything extra. It's the second item in that they seem like seperate companies, with Compaq at the low end to make the higher end HP machines seem better is more probable.
judge ware (Score:3, Funny)
which was overruled by Judge Ware today
Is his first name Hard?
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Get real, people. (Score:5, Insightful)
A class action is NEVER about making he victims whole. It's about punishing the offending corporation. Period.
If you ever go into a class action thinking you're going to gain something personally, you're an idiot. (Unless, of course, you're a lawyer.)
Since this is slashdot, I'll try to make a poor analogy. It's like the geeks and nerds at a school hiring a freelance bully to take care of their local bully. The nerds and geeks shouldn't expect to get anything out of it except a cessation of hostile activity from their local bully. The freelancer gets to keep the bulk of whatever he manages to recover from the local bully. He may get the bully to agree to give a candy bar to every kid in the school but the geeks and nerds aren't going to recover multiple years' worth of lunch money. The goal is to prevent future bad behavior on the part of the local bully and nothing more.
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Well, that's one theory anyway. Many class actions are actually more complex than that. Often a class action is pursued with the tacit support of the corporation. You see, when a corporation faces an unknown liability (in this case based on lots of individual laptops) they'd like to wrap it all up in a single number. And negotiate that number down as much as possible - with one party on the other side of the negotiation. Getting a class certified is step one of this process.
Of course, the class action
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A class action is NEVER about making he victims whole
Correct, its about making the attorneys ( on BOTH sides.. ) wealthy.
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A class action is NEVER about making he victims whole. It's about punishing the offending corporation. Period.
Except in reality it's not even about that, but more akin to class-action lawyers acting like derivatives traders, where they make millions doing nothing useful for the economy while their customers are lucky to see any gain at all.
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> A class action is NEVER about making he victims whole.
Are you saying that the above is the case, or that the above is good?
I think most of the discussion is in the context of whether it is good, not whether it is the current state of law -- though your observation that it is the general state of law is an important fact in the greater discussion of whether it is what should be.
If you are saying that the above is good, do you suggest an alternative avenue for making those who were wronged whole, or that
Summary is misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
So some 3 year old HP laptops that cost a lot back then are being replaced by $350 HP laptops now. Normally a 3 year laptop can't even be sold for $350 (unless it's a top of the line Apple model - and these aren't). And what about the specs? Nowhere in TFA is a comparison of the specs of the system being offered with the specs of the original systems.
From TFA, a lawyer and an expert witness for the people suing NVIDIA actually agreed the systems were broadly equivalent. Maybe they needed an expert witness who was either more expert or less honest.
Where exactly is the bait? Or the switch? I guess the article was submitted by one of people who expected his 3 year old system with something that costs the same now, so he could have a substantial improvement in performance.
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I think the argument is that back then, those were top of the line laptops. The ones they are getting today are not top of the line laptops.
The specs may be the same, but the court should recognize that equivalent should be associated with cost as well as specs. The laptop of old was meant to run games of that day, the new laptops should run games of this day. If one laptop cost $2k, the new one should at the very least run $2k today.
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but that assumes that you have a working phone for 3 years, then one day it breaks, and a week or so later, a replacement shows up which is the same (if there are still stocks) or the next closest thing which is available. So you pootle on your merry way with your phone's relative capability degrading as it was before it broke.
It sounds like we're talking about someone who bought a $300 phone, it never really worked, and after 3 years of not being able to use a fancy phone, they're finally offered a replace
Re:Summary is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. These people were without a laptop for 3 years. At the time the laptop died, it was worth $2000 and these people told nvidia: fix this mess you created. Nvidia declined and a suit was filed which took 3 years. It's not the customers fault it took so long to get justice. The day the damage was claimed against nvidia was the day the value of the item in question is determined.
If you have to sue your insurance company about your car for 3 years, the company can't continue to depreciate the amount it owes you over that time if they're found guilty..
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continue your car analogy. You buy a $20k car. You drive it for one week. It breaks irreparably due to a latent manufacturing fault. The manufacturer takes 7 years to accept that the fault was actually theirs. They then proceed to offer you $5k, what the car would now be worth after 7 years use, if it were not broken. You've paid $15k for 0 years utility.
Fair?
No, you are misleading (Score:4, Informative)
The laptops with this nvidia were sold defective, and it was spotted RIGHT AWAY. Nvidia lied about the parts not being defective and refused replacement. That is why there is a lawsuit. The lawsuit has taken 3 years, so of course you can't replace these laptops with the exact model anymore. It's stupid to even offer replacements at this point, so this should be a cash settlement instead.
Since nvidia parts aren't usually sold in laptops that cheap, the refund should be much higher. This isn't about getting something new three years later. It's about something that should have immediately been covered under warrenty and recalled especially since they knew they were bad. Intel has had bad silicon before, and did the right thing!
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It is not the consumers fault that it took 4 years to get action, and the laptops had depreciated by then. Most consumers laptops barely lasted one year. Then, they had to buy new laptops, because HP refused to replace the defective ones. That is why small claims court would have been a better route. You can sue for lost productivity. I am also getting stuck with the $350 replacement Compaq.
So, I bought a $1200 laptop that lasted 6 months before overheating. I had to back everything up and ship it back. HP
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Also misleading: bait-and-switch. This is not a bait and switch. They did not offer to sell the customers one thing and then deliver something else. This is about a class action lawsuit settlement. There is no "bait" at all here except to file a claim.
Re:Summary is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
So some 3 year old HP laptops that cost a lot back then are being replaced by $350 HP laptops now. Normally a 3 year laptop can't even be sold for $350 (unless it's a top of the line Apple model - and these aren't). And what about the specs? Nowhere in TFA is a comparison of the specs of the system being offered with the specs of the original systems...
Where exactly is the bait? Or the switch? I guess the article was submitted by one of people who expected his 3 year old system with something that costs the same now, so he could have a substantial improvement in performance.
The TX1000 series which is a large portion of this suit is a convertible tablet PC. I own one of these, it was a dual-core 1.9GHz Proc, 3GB RAM, 12.1"(which is VERY portable), and had a screen that could be turned over and closed to provide a tablet. You cannot touch one of these for anywhere near the price of that Compaq being offered, nor does this "comparable" computer listed offer ANY of the features this notebook did. An iPad would be a closer fit to a Tx1000 series notebook, and even that is less of a machine and twice the cost of the Compaq.
Laptops are more complicated (Score:3)
A new econobox 15" laptop is not even close to equivalent to a three-year-old high-end ultraportable. Or a three-year-old 17" gaming laptop. Or a three-year-old tablet PC. Or even a three-year-old high-end 15" office laptop. It's dishonest to suggest that because the new econobox has comparable benchmarks, that it's a comparable system. Laptops are more complicated than that. The econobox has nowhere near the same utility.
If you disagree, try lugging it through an airport instead of the older ultrapor
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I was surprised when NVIDIA picked one model to replace all of the laptops, and I was shocked to find that that model was the cheapest laptop that Best Buy sells.
You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer are you?
Of course they are giving you the absolute cheapest thing they can get away with. Only if a judge says otherwise will they offer anything better.
Paid the lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bet a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 that the lawyers are well paid.
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The question though is why these lawyers, who were acting on behalf of the consumers in the first place, are not acting on the behalf of the consumers in order to get a reasonable replacement?
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The question though is why these lawyers, who were acting on behalf of the consumers in the first place,
Faulty premise. The lawyers, purporting to represent the class of plaintiffs, were really representing themselves. I'm sure the negotiation comes down to Nvidia saying "OK, Counselor, how much is this going to take to make this go away?" and the lawyer saying "Well, I need about $13 million. And you can give the plaintiffs whatever you feel like. Don't go nuts. You're supposed to do that paying me first
Thank god for extended warranties... (Score:5, Informative)
I got lucky. My Dell laptop with a nice dual 8800M-GTX (SLI) card in it failed in a very interesting way. It would boot up in 2D just fine (I could boot in safe mode, and I could get to the login screen), but the instant it started up 3D, it would either lock up or bluescreen (an interesting one - it wasn't the usual BSOD, just one that said something like "Hardware parity error")
Thankfully I bought the 4 year extended on-site warranty, so I simply called Dell, faked through their OS restore procedure (same effect - though it gets as far as the testing 3D performance step before it locks up - I already tried it).
I had them also send the tech a replacement graphics card as well, and told them to replace that first. Half an hour later, it was working great.
Thank god for extended warranties. I usualy get them for laptops because heat failures are common... and probably one of the few times an extended warranty makes sense.
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No need for extended warranties on new items.
Just use the warranty that already came with the unit (1 year typical), and if the company refuses to accept a return, go ahead and return the item to the company anyway. Then file a credit card dispute saying, "I returned this damaged unit. Here's proof of delivery," and you'll get your refund from Visa or Mastercard.
Re:Thank god for extended warranties... (Score:4, Insightful)
If an extended warranty made sense, they wouldn't sell it to you. You're pretty much always better of taking the money the were going to charge you for the extended warranty and setting it aside in your own "personal warranty" fund. Think of all the devices you've bought over the years. How many of them have really failed during the time period and in a way that the extended warranty would even have been effective...
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An extended warranty on laptops is usually a good idea. Most other things the extended warranty is a waste of money, but for laptops it's a good deal. I wouldn't go with one longer than about 3 years though, I've found that to be sufficient to make it worthwhile. Just make sure to know the terms, some will replace it with an equivalent model, but a good one will replace it with one that is of similar price if they can't find the same one.
Re:Thank god for extended warranties... (Score:4, Insightful)
It does not apply to health and auto insurance, because you only have one life (and usually one or very few cars) to insure. If you had dozens, then it would not make sense to pay someone else to do your risk averaging for you.
The maximum loss in the event your $2k laptop fails is... $2k for another laptop. You don't get so attached to a laptop that you'll spend anything just to keep it around a little longer.
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They can be. I had a four year extended warranty on a Compaq I bought in 2003. At a point where the warranty would have expired I send it to repairs, where the screen and battery were replaced, and a few other minor details were repaired as well. Later before the extended warranty expired I send it to repairs again, with roughly the same things being broken again. At that point they didn't repair it, but I got a refund of what an equivalent machine would have co
Opt out of class (Score:3)
This is why my standard response when I receive notice of a class-action settlement is to return the paperwork with the "I decline to participate in the class" boxes checked. If you don't respond, you're considered part of the class and are bound by the terms of the settlement. By declining I preserve my right to make my own claim against the company.
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So will you try to take them to small claims court to get more than the cheap laptop? Or did you just give up the ~$200 you could have made selling this thing on eBay?
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Well, if I had one of these laptops I'd simply contact whoever I bought it from about returning it as defective. If they balked, next step is to call American Express (you think I'd pay for something like this with anything else?) about a merchant refusing to accept a return of defective merchandise. Supporting documentation from the court filings, yadda yadda, and barring something unusual the money will be credited back to my card, the merchant's account gets debited and the merchant gets to argue with Am
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Strangely, this also offers you a bit of an opportunity for leverage. A certain percentage must opt in for the class to be certified. If you randomly happen to be a hold-out in a case where a few more opt-ins would make a difference, you might get offered all kinds of goodies to join the class.
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My question is always, how can that be legal?
How is it that Class action lawsuits are OPT-OUT instead of OPT-IN?
What happens if I moved and they sent it to an old address? Could I still make my own claim?
If they aren't sending the letter using registered mail, how am I able to prove I never received it? How can THEY prove that I actually received the letter if they have no confirmation it was even delivered?
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Unfortunately, many of us liked the terms of the settlement that said "new laptop of similar kind and value," and choose to not opt out. The CQ56 wasn't selected until mid-February - 2 months after the opt-out deadline. Now we lost our right to file a claim against either NVIDIA or HP. Lesson learned: vagueness in settlement agreements is NOT accidental.
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Intel 'graphics' (Score:2)
Looks like all the gamers can throw away all their games other than solitare and farmville.
Sorry, but let's face it, any kind of integrated nvidia gpus is massively superior to any of the intel gpus, or whatever is the appropriate term for those integrated graphics chips.
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Sorry, but let's face it, any kind of integrated nvidia gpus is massively superior to any of the intel gpus, or whatever is the appropriate term for those integrated graphics chips.
I think the correct term you're looking for is 'waste of PCB real-estate.'
not only that intel video + celeron cpu sucks. 2gb (Score:2)
not only that intel video + celeron cpu sucks. 2gb ram also sucks now days.
I wish this suit was on slashdot earlier (Score:2)
The deadline to file was March 14th, and I own one of these defective HP's. In fact it died three months ago.
Hammer the vendors (Score:3)
My Macbook Pro had one of the offending NVIDIA chips. When it failed out of warranty Apple simply replaced it. They didn't send me to NVIDIA for a solution. I assume they hammered NVIDIA to get their money back for the replacement part. The OEM computer manufacturers are always going to have more leverage with their suppliers than you or I will. Responsible vendors should shield the end user from this sort of pettiness and finger pointing. After all, you didn't buy your laptop from NVIDIA...
Consumers lose, but guess who wins? (Score:2)
There, FTFY. You KNOW they got their golden parachutes even while the "business" tanked. It's not a coincidence that lawyers, CEOs, and politicians are all indistinguishable: they're all paid to screw with (over) people.
Could be worse... (Score:2)
... you could be the not-so-proud owner of one of the other affected brands (e.g. Toshiba) NOT included in the suit, and get nothing at all except the finger and a Simpsons-like "Ha-ha!".
Jefferson is coming. (Score:2)
If the courts continue to act not in the interest of the people, we will surely reach the boiling point of revolution sooner. And myself and Jefferson both say hurrah!
My $1650 HP TX1100 tablet failed (Score:3)
Re:$2500 Tablets (Score:5, Informative)
Who the heck spends $2500 on a tablet PC?
Someone who bought a tablet PC, not an iPad or Xoom. It's a miniaturized laptop with a flip-around touchscreen. Expensive hardware.
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Mine (HP TX2512) was $1000 two and some years ago.
OTOH, it was an HP (ATI graphics though) and has issues due various stupid design decisions.
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Pretty much anyone who bought a tablet before the iPad came out.
seriously the average tablet computer back then was $2000 if you wanted a 10" screen or larger.
It is why every other company thought Apple would come out with the iPad for $1000 or so since they are a premium brand name and always charge more. The $499 price forced everyone back to the drawing board which is why 1 year later there is only one decent competitor and it will be another 6 months before a second actually hits the market.
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Of course when Jobs starts banging on about the iPad controlling 80% of the tablet market, he's conveniently omitting convertibles like the above ThinkPad, which likely make up 90%+ of PC tablet sales.
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A convertible isn't a tablet. It is a notebook with a touch screen. All convertibles only have 2-3 applications which use the touch interface the rest you need the keyboard/mouse for.
A tablet shouldn't require a table to use after ten minutes.
I have wanted a tablet since 2002 when the first slates cane out. It took 8 years and apple to realize you needed to do more than add a touch sensor and have it duplicate the mouse.
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Uh... I disagree. Provided you have a decent mouse-binding to the touchscreen, mouse apps are generally perfectly usable with a touchscreen or Wacom Penabled-style tablet.
In the case of the former, you need to bind right-click to touching the screen for 0.5-1.0s, and left click to quicker taps.
In the case of the latter, a right-click modifier button on the pen will do fine.
Aside from that, perhaps add some drag detection in select apps and set that up for scrolling. Just about all you need.
I think the only
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A convertible isn't a tablet. It is a notebook with a touch screen. All convertibles only have 2-3 applications which use the touch interface the rest you need the keyboard/mouse for.
I have a convertible on which I loaded standard Windows 7. It works fine in every program. You certainly don't need custom applications. The OS comes with support for system wide gestures, on screen keyboard (a choice of two actually) and handwriting recognition. It does more than duplicate the mouse.
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I wouldn't be so sure, Fujitsu has a large line of popular LifeBook Tablet PCs [shopfujitsu.com], and Newegg has a wide variety of tablet pcs available [newegg.com] with the most models coming from Panasonic and their $2400-$4000 Toughbook series
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The difference being of course that the iPad is a large cellphone, while tablet PCs are PCs in tablet form. Completely different hardware and capabilities.
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Even now expect to spend above $2k if you want a precision tablet screen. Capacitive touch screens are fine for phones or anything designed for clicking on buttons. If you need the precision of a stylus (for "inking") than a capacitive screen is close to useless.
I just bought two Thinkpad tablets and one Motion Computing tablet for my users, and they were all over $3k. Admittedly, we got SSDs instead of spinning drives, but other than that we didn't fancy them up much.
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Holy shit, that's a real model name? Jesus Christ.
Re:Tell Me About It.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy shit, that's a real model name? Jesus Christ.
How else do you differentiate it from an EEE TM101MT-EU38-BK ?
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Depends on the laptop. My 18 month old $2700 Toshiba Qosmio is still sold today. Slightly better graphics module but otherwise only 200 bucks less than what I paid back then.
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fair enough, but how should people be compensated for the last however many years of not having the stonking computer they paid for? 3 years ago (or whatever it was) these people forked over $2000 (or more) for what should have been an excellent (contemporary) laptop, and then didn't receive one. Shouldn't they now at least receive a machine occupying a similar place in the market as what they paid for? If you manage to claim back lost money from someone, it normally comes with interest at least to make up
Re:Tell Me About It.... (Score:4, Informative)
The offered machine may be a bit better than the one it's replacing, but most software has got a lot heavier in the intervening time. In terms of what's being asked of it, the replacement is worse.
The vast majority of defective machines have better specs than the replacement machine. A 3 year old laptop with a dual-core 2.2 GHz processor (AMD Turion 64 x2 TL-64 processor in many of the defective machines) is still faster than a single-core 2.3 GHz processor (AMD V140 in CQ56). Moreover, the replacement lacks just about every feature present on the defective machines (the CQ56 doesn't even have a webcam).
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I haven't had a single laptop last a single year past the expensive addon warrenty period. After my second lappy fail I bought myself a desktop for the first time in many years.
My current one is almost 5 years old and I'll probably replace it soon - because it's starting to feel slow, rather than because it's broken. The one before it I replaced after just over three years, for the same reason. Both were Macs and came with a 3 year warranty. I also have a ThinkPad that is getting on for 8 years old now, although the battery is completely dead (I could replace it, but I never use it as a mobile device, I just wanted a computer that was easy to move around).
My 386 laptop (CAF
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Out of the dozen or so laptops I've owned only one was brand new and they've all lasted several years. Right now I have a Fujitsu tablet that is running fine despite being a few years old, replacing the battery really breathed new life into it, and the core 2 duo Acer seems to be doing fine despite some apparent water damage vi