I spoke with Roland Riggs, the attorney with Milberg LLP (NY) who was referred to me when I emailed them regarding some of the stipulations in the initial wording of the suit. He impressed me as a tech-savvy attorney, even called me twice--but I was really, really disgusted with the way this thing turned out for those hurt financially by buying this crap. I told Riggs I got the impression that HP had been shipping out laptops, knowing all along they would very likely overheat, and in fact, had probably shut down their 'lines' a few times to restamp these 'faulty', 'overheating-prone' GPUs on boards that weren't really equipped to handle them anyway.
Murky and speculative as this may seem, I still think this, and 'being right' doesn't make me right about suggesting to Riggs that Milberg might also want to 'look into' the huge number of faulty Bestec desktop power supplies I was also seeing come though my little one-man PC repair operation at the time. I read that Milberg actually made $39 million off handling the nvidia suit, while consumers who 'joined' in it got just around $13 million.
Well, hope I burn in hell for telling him about the power supply thing--I had this 'zany' idea for BOTH SUITS, that the manufacturers involved (mainly, HP) would set up 'repair kiosks' in hundreds of national shopping malls, advertising in local papers something like: "Do you own an HP Pavilion DVx Laptop manufactured between 20xx and 20xx" (or something similar, with the PS), but, of course, the attorneys/manufacturers jumped in bed together and frankly, formed a veritable slip'n'slide for my trip to Hades (yay!).
Found Riggs here:
http://www.milberg.com/rriggs/
Yup, fits perfectly--the guy I spoke with was very young, and said he himself had a 'tech' background (had worked previously at BB, CC, or some big box e-store).
I frigging hate this, because I've ALSO seen a couple of the 'replacement lappies'--those absolutely worthless CQ56's--come through my shop, by the very people who got them as part of the 'settlement' (UNsettling here: they were the ONLY two customers who 'participated' in the suit).
For what I've seen in the CQ56's, I'd toss Judge Ware straight to hell, as well, for his own, personal, little 'noob/cronyish' assessment of the things--one client of mine who had to settle with it was a young Bosnian mom with a newborn, living in the same 2BR apt. as her folks.
Just a really, really shitty way to mishandle this suit, entirely, and I wish the Supreme Court would get off their asses and actually 'learn' something to begin looking at the way these suits tend to be mishandled and pay to the attorneys such vast fees, while the hapless consumers end up with even more rubbish to have to repair.
Her CQ56 was overheating within a month of her having received it, and I felt somewhat LARGELY responsible for telling her about the suit at all.
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.
I saw HP lappies ranging anywhere from big 19" screens (over $1200 back then), down to little 15.4" models which customers paid less than $500 for; but where I differ from this *****ic judge who mishandled the case, is here: In my 'professional opinion', having repaired hundreds of laptops myself, I'd consider the Nvidia GPU in question not only to be a 'pre-existing' [manufacturer's] defect, but also one they fully knew about.
Judgement: plaintiff(s)--full reimbursement per customer, in the amt of 'whatever they originally paid' for these albatrosses, from retail, all they way down to 'yard sale', if they could prove it worked when they bought it. Plus, the community service I'd dole out to HP in particular (for knowing), nVidia (to a lesser extent, but still...heavy in it), would be in the way of 'public humiliation', complete with 'top-down' CEOs strutting about in their shark-skins in front of Best Buy wearing sandwich-boards saying stuff like "I made millions as an HP exec while knowingly screwing consumers out of hundreds of millions".
Pure Fantasy, and I know it--gonna have my head examined very soon. Some people are just born without consciences.
I am a class member that returned an HP DV9420US with 17" screen, numeric keyboard, HDMI input, dual core processor, etc., and etc. For those of you that think the higher-end HP members are getting a fair shake - go do your homework before you post an *****ic comment that we are getting fair replacements. A Compaq CQ56 is something I would buy one of my middle school kids as a beginner machine. I purchased my HP in October of 2007, and by early 2009 I was already experiencing problems connecting to my wireless network at home. Someone mentioned contacting HP - yeah, right ... every single support rep I talked to acted like I was the only person having this problem and could finally only offer me a $450 repair option. The time I wasted on that alone is worth more than 3 or 4 of the replacement machines.
For any of you in my shoes that have the kahunas, I suggest you do as I did and write a well thought out message to 60-Minutes (
60m@cbsnews.com) and ask them to at least review the NVIDIA GPU Class Action Settlement and the recent hearing brought forth by Mr. Ted Frank with the Center for Class Action Fairness. Maybe if enough of us bring this to their attention, we might get some coverage. Long shot? ... yep, but what's there to lose ...
JPnDenverNC
This is typical of what I saw--many customers I had, having these issues, everything from pricey, $1k+ 19" multimedia models, down to 15.4", home-consumer-grade units, all doled out the CQ56 'excuse for a laptop', which immediately began overheating, along with having other issues. I had one in 3 mos. after a customer got it--installing Speedfan, selling her a $10 monoprice cooling pad was all I could do, and this did not easy my own conscience any, since I'd told her about the suit myself.