I know that many of you got in on the Best Buy or Staples version of a deal back around the first of the year for the ZE4XXX series of laptops. It is a fairly widely know fact that these laptops have a bad deisgn when it comes to the AC power plug (there are other manufacturers that use the same motherboard and share this defect especially Compaq).
The problem lays out as follows:
The inside diameter of the socket that the AC adapter slides into is too large allowing wiggle in the connection when it is plugged in. Very little stress is required to cause the pin to become loose at the motherboard solder connetion leading to falky power connection issues. In worse cases the plastic boot that forms the socket on the inside of the laptop actaully splits open making it impossible to connect the power and leading to a very fancy paperweight once the battery dies.
Some suggestions on how to fix this issue have been kicked around in other forums but I wanted to tie them together and offer my experience in getting HP to fix mine.
One of the ideas contirbuted by davemac was to make a pigtail that you could use to dongle the connection out of the hole. This helps because the factory connector on the AC adapter is a 90 degree plug making that makes the stress issue worse. The parts for the male and famale ends can be found at:
Inline Male Jack
Female Plug
And bridge them with some wire and Heat Shrink Tubing
Other ideas were to take electrical tape that has been trimmed down to about a 1/4" wide and wrap it around the plug to take up the slack. If you put it in the right place you can avoid the contact inside the laptop that contacts the outside of the plug when it is plugged in. (Look inside the hole and you can see it). The wraps make contact with the inside of the socket and make the connection snug making it less likely that the solder connection will break but the plastic piece is still in jeapordy.
These are both very good suggestions, the latter being the cheapest and easiest, however, the fact reamins that the socket is not sufficiently designed to take the forces that it is likely to see in the real world and it will eventually fail. Mine broke within 4 months of purchase and I am very careful with my equipment (my wife, not so much)
.
There has also been alot of back and forth among those people who had problems as to whether it is covered under the warranty. Some claim yes, some claim no. Well, I finally got around to calling HP about it this afternoon and they are going to fix it for free. Apparently, there have been enough complaints about this issue that they are finally handling up on their business. Here is what I did:
I called Customer Care at 1-800-474-6836 and spoke to a guy named Duke. I never registered my product so he asked me my prurchase date and presonal information as well as the serial number (starts with a T) and my product code (starts with a D). After that he asked me what the problem was so I proceeded to tell him that after I had done some research on it that it seemed to be a fairly common thing that many people have had problems with and explained what was wrong.
He said that they would send someone from FedEx to my house to tomorrow between 1 and 5 to pick it up and that I needed to box it and pad it well and they would fix it free. These machines have a default one year warranty.
I don't know if mentioning that I knew that it was a common problem helped but it didn't hurt. I'll come back and post the outcome for those of you that have had this problem and for those unsuspecting individuals that may in the future. In the meantime, be very careful with this connection. Or don't just make sure that the problem doesn't happen after the year is up .
Cheers!
The problem lays out as follows:
The inside diameter of the socket that the AC adapter slides into is too large allowing wiggle in the connection when it is plugged in. Very little stress is required to cause the pin to become loose at the motherboard solder connetion leading to falky power connection issues. In worse cases the plastic boot that forms the socket on the inside of the laptop actaully splits open making it impossible to connect the power and leading to a very fancy paperweight once the battery dies.
Some suggestions on how to fix this issue have been kicked around in other forums but I wanted to tie them together and offer my experience in getting HP to fix mine.
One of the ideas contirbuted by davemac was to make a pigtail that you could use to dongle the connection out of the hole. This helps because the factory connector on the AC adapter is a 90 degree plug making that makes the stress issue worse. The parts for the male and famale ends can be found at:
Inline Male Jack
Female Plug
And bridge them with some wire and Heat Shrink Tubing
Other ideas were to take electrical tape that has been trimmed down to about a 1/4" wide and wrap it around the plug to take up the slack. If you put it in the right place you can avoid the contact inside the laptop that contacts the outside of the plug when it is plugged in. (Look inside the hole and you can see it). The wraps make contact with the inside of the socket and make the connection snug making it less likely that the solder connection will break but the plastic piece is still in jeapordy.
These are both very good suggestions, the latter being the cheapest and easiest, however, the fact reamins that the socket is not sufficiently designed to take the forces that it is likely to see in the real world and it will eventually fail. Mine broke within 4 months of purchase and I am very careful with my equipment (my wife, not so much)
There has also been alot of back and forth among those people who had problems as to whether it is covered under the warranty. Some claim yes, some claim no. Well, I finally got around to calling HP about it this afternoon and they are going to fix it for free. Apparently, there have been enough complaints about this issue that they are finally handling up on their business. Here is what I did:
I called Customer Care at 1-800-474-6836 and spoke to a guy named Duke. I never registered my product so he asked me my prurchase date and presonal information as well as the serial number (starts with a T) and my product code (starts with a D). After that he asked me what the problem was so I proceeded to tell him that after I had done some research on it that it seemed to be a fairly common thing that many people have had problems with and explained what was wrong.
He said that they would send someone from FedEx to my house to tomorrow between 1 and 5 to pick it up and that I needed to box it and pad it well and they would fix it free. These machines have a default one year warranty.
I don't know if mentioning that I knew that it was a common problem helped but it didn't hurt. I'll come back and post the outcome for those of you that have had this problem and for those unsuspecting individuals that may in the future. In the meantime, be very careful with this connection. Or don't just make sure that the problem doesn't happen after the year is up .
Cheers!