Customers get shafted in Nvidia class action suit

If I paid $1000 dollars for a defective product, I would want $1000 in return or a new computer valued at $1000, period. I don't buy into the crap of "oh, but this is how much its worth now". If I paid $1000 for a paperweight, I would want a new modern laptop valued at $1000.

Class action lawsuits are not designed to help the consumer at all. They are a way for lawyers to get rich with far less work. If each one of the lawyers was to put in the same amount of work for each person's case, doing these suits would be far less cost effective. All they have to do is try the same case once, and then collect the money as if they tried 10,000 such cases. Their profits are 10,000 times, with 1/10,000th the work.

We read time and time again of 40 million settlements in which each plaintiff gets 20 bucks, but the lawyers collect 20 million. How is this fair for anyone but the lawyers?

This is why class action lawsuits don't work. The only people that see any good come from them are the attorneys.

I think it is a safe bet that Nvidia will soon be protested by a popular nameless group.

Pay them back with lesser depreciated dollars....nice

To most obvious point, of course I'd be unhappy. I'd prefer a full refund or at least a fix of the machine.

Why in gods name would I want a lower end machine.

And this is an example of another reason why I won't purchase nVidia products. I feel bad for those being screwed over by this. They've been sitting on a garbage machine for so long, and then this happens. Its like being stabbed and then having the knife twisted!

Good way to lose business Nvidia, I'm going with ATI on my next upgrade (which is soon.) As for HP, I don't trust those comp box companies.

I've been rocking AMD parts for the past few years, and base all my builds on the AMD platform. Their CPU's may not be as powerful as Intel's but the CPU's sure do a lot better than nVidia. And with the price/power that you get from an AMD CPU, you can afford a high-end (or two) GPU, plus the rest of your system.

So... let me get this straight.
Costumers paid for a (back in the day) $1000 laptop.
And now they get a replacement laptop WHICH EXCEEDS or has nearly equal specs to the 3-year-old laptops. And they complain because it's a budget laptop?
Seems to me that this would be acceptable, unless I am misunderstanding something.

If you bought a car worth $30,000 and had all the bells and whistles at the time, but it had some major issues. Took a class action suit to issue a full recall of the car and the manufacturer was to replace it w/another vehicle. 5yrs had passed and the 30k value of your car was now down to 15k so the manufacturer gave you a 15k car (aka a base model with little options). How would you feel? Sure its brand new, has a new warranty and prob. gets better mileage than the previous one. Heck, it may even be safer. But you paid $30k for the original car. Fair trade?

Hmmm not only that, but I wonder if the Attorneys got paid in 2008 dollars.

Ah, now I understand the issue here. The issue is really that the systems should have been replaced from the start, instead of having wait for 3 years.
However, to be fair, even 3 years later, you can't expect your system to be replaced with a brand new top-of-the-line system. You purchased a product, and seeing as it was defect, it should be repaired or switched out to a brand new system of the same model.
Although, I do think it would have been fair for the users to have been compensated in some way to compensate for the time they had been unable to use their system.

The best part is that the replacement laptop has AMD/ATi graphics!

@Matthew
I can see your point of view that the customers got shafted, but I can't disagree with the ruling. Those represented by the class-action suit filed for and won, as you say, "a replacement computer of like or similar kind and equal or similar value ". Simply because time has devalued their investment does not mean that they didn't get what they paid for. The replacement is equal to or better than the product they initially bought. Is it unfortunate? Yes. Is it unfair? No. If the customers had issues with their original computers, they should should have had them replaced by HP, with HP settling with NVIDIA separately.

Edit: Guest beat me.

Were they really unable to use the laptop at all though? Because if it was not usable at all, then why would you hold onto said laptop for 3 years waiting on the outcome of a lawsuit? If you did get use out of it, then how the FACK do you think that doesn't affect the value 3 years later? Too much suing going on in the good ol U S of A. I also agree with the settlement.

What a lot of you don't understand is this. pretend you bought a laptop three years ago and it was defective. It cost you $1000 then. They then leave you high and dry for three years and then give you a laptop worth ~$300 that is not at the same area of the spectrum that you paid for. You lost $700 and had no laptop for three years.

wait a minute!
Electronics changes and has gotten cheaper over the last three years, the capability per dollar has changed etc, etc. The only thing in this that has remained steady is that these folks shelled out $1000.00 in 2008. (which is now worth about $1100) approx. no matter how electronics has evolved, these guys shelled out $1000 for the product. why don't they deserve $1000 worth of product back? I mean why should Nvidia pocket all of the difference in the evolution of the product. They (and the 'distributors' of the laptops got paid $1000 originally. Now only have to return $300 to the customers that got the defective product??...why is that? fine give them the $300 laptop...and $700 cash.

It's not the customers fault it took the courts three years to come to a verdict. Depreciation should not have been a variable in the replacement value. However if the merchandise was defective, the customer should not have waited for an outcome in the case.