HP dv9000 series notebook blues.

[NickD 202]

Got three of these, wife, step son, and daughter in that order. Son's crapped out last January, hit the power button, LED's would flash on, then off within a second. Hold the power button down, the LED's would flash on for a second every five seconds for as long as you hold it.

With son's, contacted HP, was a recall on it, was out of that super fast one year warranty, but they repaired it at no charge, no shipping either. Couple of days ago, daughter's HP, a later and the newest model also out of warranty started to do the same thing. Two hours on the HP chat line got me nowhere except for a zillion, we are sorry. Want 440 bucks flat to repair it, said it's a problem with the mainboard, want darn near that much if I exchanged it myself. If that is the problem.

I always favored Toshiba's as the most reliable notebook, but what do I know, not as flashy as the HP's, believe my wife, son, and daughter have changed their views.

Found a ton of people on the internet with the same problem with an equal number of well-doers trying to help that don't know ####### with all kinds of strange things to do. One guy sounding like a real expert said he works on many and found the wireless antenna shorting out on the mainboard. That led me to take hers completely apart and examine every possible cause of a short. Only found one suspect cable between the keyboard and screen, but it checked out fine after removing and tested it. Put it all back together, same problem.

I can think of a zillion reasons that can cause these problems, but her model number is different than the wife's or son with a different mainboard, so can't even isolate the problem to that or anyother board. Plus risk burning out their boards as well since these three layer guys don't know a damn thing about protecting the I/O pinouts.

At the HP site, those that have paid the $440.00 only got a 90 day warranty with the same problem all over again, HP wanted another $440.00, they were pissed.

I feel our best solution is to pitch that throwaway item and attempt to buy a laptop with reliability, at least one that works until the software vendors obsolete it. That we know is going to happen. The question is, which make? I think they all are #######, did meet an engineer that worked at mainboard company, told me if they don't check out off the line, they pitched them. Totally unrepairable, even impossible to remove a component, if you could find a replacement due to that multilayer PCB, an internal run that you cannot see or even get at can break.

Happy with a desk top, and it's good to leave a computer when leaving the house so you can regain your sanity, also good to leave the phone at home, but I can't do that anymore, well guess I don't want to, to let my wife know I am okay after a long trip.

[spookyturtle 9,465]

Look into Asus. They make outstanding laptops. http://www.gentechpc.com/

Edited January 16, 2010 by spookyturtle

[Der Bücherwurm 1]

HP makes great printer/scanner/copy machines but they make ####### laptops. I was given one as a gift and it started to fail within a year. I read an article recently that rated HP laptops as the most likely to fail within a year of purchase. I've decided that HP stands for Heaping Pile...

[Darnell 8,478]

I am a fan of fujitsu.

[spookyturtle 9,465]

I am a fan of fujitsu.

Sheep eater.

[Niels Bohr 72]

I could careless about manufacturers. I'm not a fanboy. Heck, 99% of all computer problems are related to the users.