There was a comment on my previous post from Dave Farr:  “Any Canadians wishing to join a class action suit in Canada (Vancouver) regarding defective video chipsets and motherbaords in the HP brand dv series (perhaps others as well) please contact me. davefarr1967@gmail.com”

I wrote to him to ask more about this, and he replied more at length.  I present his email here as information about this motherboard malfunction.

Hi Dave,

Well, I own an HP dv9000cto which died in Brazil on me around June
after 2 years of service, the symptoms of the graphics chipset failure
began in April and I then started a service file with HP- this is an
American model and they strung things out long enough to be out of
every warranty and recall. HP then offered to ‘fix all issues’ for
$400cdn. I had researched the problems and wasn’t convinced that they
could fix the problem to last a reasonable length of time- I suppose
my expectation of a laptop lasting 5+ years is unrealistic. I used the
unit for work so that was a real problem as well.
When researching this I couldn’t believe the extent of the problem as
the name HP stood for quality (a lot of people, including myself
mistakenly thought), and I was bothered that Americans had their s**t
together and could go after HP for some kind of settlement. I then
decided ‘why not?’ and investigated a similar action here, it can be
done but it requires alot of work and I get the feeling that Canadians
are too busy to be bothered taking on a giant corporation… I found a
lawyer in Vancouver who is willing to take a shot at this with some
backup from down south. The biggest problem I have found is getting
the word out to HP-dv owners (especially in Ontario- why? because the
laws there favor cross country suites), any help on this issue would
be greatly appreciated. Bruce Lemer is the lawyers name and he made a
good point that these companies make and keep hundreds of dollars
profit on any owner that doesn’t squawk about the quality of the
product they sell to the public. I don’t know what issues Compaq has,
but I am sure HP has warehouses full of dead dv’s.

Thanks for the email…

Dave Farr”

Both companies are one and the same, and the computer is basically the same.

Both have known issues with the motherboard.  Hewlett-Packard / Compaq seems to be completely ignoring the issue on their public forums, but knows about the issue.  They have ducked responsibility on all users who’s laptops happen to last longer than two years.

Here’s where Hewlett Packard Compaq tells you how to get your laptop fixed.

Here is just one of many forums  where users are completely frustrated by this problem in HP mother boards that doesn’t go away after HPs “fix” and others who are refused any help at all from HP Compaq simply because their computers lasted more than two years.  Here’s another discussion about the new HP-Paperweight®  And here’s another.   And another. 

Here’s about 56,000 web sites returned on a Google search for “Compaq Presario v6000 series of laptop computers won’t start.

Here’s about 293,000 web sites returned on a Google search for “Hewlett-Packard Pavilion dv6000 series of laptop computers won’t start”.

So I recommend highly that you purchase a computer made for you by your local computer store.  It’s the least expensive way to do it, and you’re likely to be able to get a more positive response when something goes wrong.

This feels a lot like an Hewlett Packard – Compaq rant than it did an informative column.  But you get what I’m getting at.  If a company doesn’t care that your $1200 laptop isn’t working after two years because of THEIR mistake, you should never, ever buy a computer from that company again.  I’ll never buy or recommend an HP or a Compaq computer to anyone.  I don’t know how they sleep at night.