illegal for laptop to prevent upgrade?

i have a hp dv2500t that only allow me to upgrade my mini-pci wireless card to only hp approved cards. isn't this practice illegal? they're trying to force us to only buy over priced upgrades from them. isn't anyone going to stand up to this? is there like a government organization i can report this to? thanks

 

Obviously, you haven't dealt with laptop hardware for very long. The only way it might be illegal would be if you were using a CBB (common building block) system. Notebook hardware is proprietary, and that's just a fact of life. They can't guarantee that a non-HP Approved card will function correctly in the notebook. Considering HP used to void your warranty just for opening the RAM or hard drive bay, I'd say it's downright magnanimous that they would allow you to upgrade the wireless card.

There are plenty of people standing up to this. They're the people who don't buy from HP, Dell, or companies with similar policies.

 

They don't prevent you from upgrading to any card you want, but if you want to have a warranty is another matter.

 

Lol, ever heard of a company called Apple? I hate how sue-happy people are these days.

 

Sounds like it's time for a class action lawsuit to me!

 

As mentioned, you can upgrade with non-HP approved parts, but if you choose a generic part, you loose your warranty. You have a choice. They are the supplier of the warranty and hence need to have some sort of control. It is common sense. If one does not like the policy, there is always the choice of not buying. Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything.

Instead of immediately wanting to report this to a government organization, I would suggest you take responsibility for your own actions and apply some common sense.

You surely must be kidding. But what worries me is that you probably are not.

This whole (class action) lawsuit trend which is being losely thrown around on NBR is really getting ridiculous. Especially considering that most don't fully know what it entails and how to manage this. Wanting to take legal action against a company because of such matters, I find to be an excellent display of ignorance, lack of common sense and inexperience.

It seems many people always want to point their fingers at someone else. A very unfortunate trend.

 

I find "know it all" jackasses to be the the most unfortunate trend of all.

 

That is a great idea lol.

honestly its not unfair, its a trade practice =)

 

Swap whatever components you want, but don't break anything in the process and keep the old components to put back should you every need warranty service.

But going back to the start of this thread, does HP recommend you use HP parts or is there something in the BIOS which prevents the computer from working properly if you use a non-HP wireless card?

John

 

That's not what he's saying. HPs have a white list that only allows cards from HP to function in HP notebooks.

 

Either way, none of it is illegal. If HP wants to charge 10 billion dollars for a laptop part that can only be bought from them, it's still legal. Free market baby.

 

Is he talking about the Magnuson Moss act (which Circa69 has a wonderful thread on)? Where you can't have tie in services with warranties?

 

That act states that Warranties should be made "clearer" and that anything ambiguous will help the consumer and hurt the company. Don't think it has anything to do with proprietary materials.

 

Like Lithus said! It is the way it is!

 

i wouldn't mine losing my warranty if i could upgrade my wifi card but it's the fact that hp disable my laptop if i try to put in any non-hp approved wifi card. i find that ridiculous. imagine if hp applied this restriction to ram, hd and optical drive upgrade. wouldn't it suck to have to buy from a limited list of hp approved component? besides, what's the point of have a interchangeable mini-pci slot if i can change the part? that's just lame.

i won't file a class action lawsuit, it's a waste of my time and effort. i'll probably do an online petition or something. just to get this issue noticed.

 

How exactly does HP disable your laptop if you put in a non-approved card? Speaking of making things proprietary, Dell used to be a pain in the butt in that section. They made desktop PCI cards backwards, so you would have to buy a special video or audio card if you wanted one. They also dabbled in RDRAM, effectively making RAM near proprietary. This kind of stuff happens in the industry, but when people got angry at Dell, they stopped. The market is very good at controlling these things, while involving the government in a class action does a few things:

1. It makes the lawyers rich
2. Everyone effected gets a $50 coupon
3. Companies raise prices to compensate for what they lost

 

Actually, if they do indeed make it so your laptop won't function with a 3rd party wireless card upgrade, that would be illegal. Is that what you're saying?

 

(note: only applies to those in the US)

just a quick clarification re: warranty (voided by mods-the short version)

They can not void your warranty for installing a 3rd party card or having work done by other than "authorized" service reps.

They will not warranty the 3rd party card (duh, it's not thier product).

Additionally they may be able to void your warranty IF they can show the 3rd party card or the "unauthorized" tech caused the damage but if another unrelated part fails they do not have any legal basis for denying a warranty claim.

See my sig for more info and a starting place to learn more.

 

WTH...so when i installed a new kingston RAM by removing HP default (ProMos) i actually voided my warranty??? pls let me know ASAP so i dont sell the factory RAM

 

No, you did not. Even OEM's will almost always recognize that replacing/upgrading parts like the RAM and sometimes the HDD doesn't affect warranty status.

 

What makes you believe it will disable your laptop?

 

Okay, thanks a lot

 

Haven't you heard? HP has implemented a new tattle tail chip in their new motherboard designs that snitch on any third party components, and then the big boss comes down and snuffs out the whole system gang land style, it's really quite a bloodbath!

 

This is a very grey area that to my knowledge has yet to be fully evaluated in the US courts. It is the current practice of companies to use the DMCA's anti-circumvention clauses to bypass the Sherman Act...

Generally speaking it is illegal for a company to prevent you from running any aftermarket parts. They can suggest that you run their approved stuff, but they are legally restricted from forcing you otherwise.

The legal way OEMs can lock you into their parts is by using non-standard connections which is more common, but increases their costs so it is also becoming less desirable compared to hiding behind the DMCA...

Time will tell which method works as the Library of Congress or the courts may render those actions illegal...

If you feel you do want to report the issue to the government, which isn't a bad idea, you should start with the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Antitrust office. Only the DOJ has the authority to bring action against companies under the Sherman Act, which this violates.

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/newcase.htm

 

Because it will. HP's BIOS prevents the laptop from booting if there's a non approved WiFi card in it.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/21/hp-bios-locks-out-al.html

 

i ve started getting bored of HP...their laptops are too expensive with poor graphic cards...best is 8400GS...
They dont really have ultra portable laptops or gaming laptops
Donno whats their target market

 

I think HPs target market has always been those that do not know any better. Unfortunately that is a very large market segment.

 

I was very disappointed to learn this when I wanted to upgrade my Broadcom card to a real wireless card (Atheros) for the purpose of running Linux properly.

 

just curious if any of you HP guys have looked for a bios hack???

 

Yeah, in cases like that it's fairly simple to edit the BIOS with to accept a new wireless card, if you know what you're doing.

 

haha...your wit at its best

 

which is the most popular laptop brand among intelligent/experienced users??

 

i have been researching a bit on hacking the bios to accept wifi card but it's very risky. if i edit it wrong, it won't boot and i'll have to send it back to hp. i am going to try editing the wifi card device id.

 

Yeah, it is risky, but there's a little info out there to help you. The best course of action would probably be to replace the ID of the current wireless solution you have with that of your new card, and absolutely make sure you update the checksum correctly.

 

After reading all of this, I am rather disappointed with the people spouting off "law" when they don't know what the hell they are talking about.

This all comes down to user rights. As a user, you *purchase* the laptop, you have a *right* to change the hardware as you see fit. However, you cannot then go back to the company and expect service on parts that are not stock, because they do not have the necessary information to provide that service (even if they do, they wouldn't tell you that).

With operating systems such a Windows, the sad truth is that you do not legally *own* the operating, but rather, are leasing it, so the control of the operating system falls back to the actual provider, in this case microsoft. Hence why they have the right to disable your os if they see fit. (truly scary, but do some research on your own).

All of these tactics have been used in the marketplace for years, since the original concept of the Pallidium project was first announced. For those unfamiliar, Pallidium was the TCPA project, or the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. A project that aimed at taking control away from users, and placing it back in the "capable" hands of the marketing and parent companies.

DRM is just a furthering step down that dark path, so people all gung ho about vista need to shut up and do their research before they start spouting that vista is great.

Anyways...

Editing the phoenix bios requires the phoenix bios editor, which ironically, costs $6k. Note-- MY EDIT!! == Phoenix bios editor ***CAN*** be ***LEGALLY*** obtained for free, you just have to do a TON of searching for it. I know of several sites where you can actually get it, but I am not willing to just throw these around. Look for it and you can find it ***legally***.
There are quite a few people out there who have had to go through this in order to regain control of something that they actually own. Rather stupid if you ask me.

 

Yeah, or you can just use a hex editor....

All that needs to be done is to replace one device ID with another one, and update the checksum.

 

Its easiest to use the hex editor, but you still have to extract the data from the bios files themselves anyway, and then recompress them

 

Or, for the more physically dextrous, attempt a physical work-around. The following webpage describes a (successful) physical work-around on an HP: http://joshuawise.com/Wireless-Whitelist.html