Skip to main content

Solving the Power Jack Problem with Certain HP/Compaq Notebooks

I have owned (and loved) my HP Pavilion zt3340us notebook for the last 3 years. It had taken the excessive use and abuse of some 10+ hours/day without any significant upgrade or repair until about a year ago when it's power adapter started acting up. I promptly bought an after-market (non-OEM) replacement($45) which lasted for some 6 months before dying itself. Following another replacement of the power adapter($30) and the purchase of a brand new after-market battery($50), the power issues persisted in different forms. Particularly, the power jack was getting too loose to charge up the battery or even consistently power the notebook. For a while, I compromised the mobility of the notebook by removing the battery, but soon the loose connection started oscillating so much that it was causing overheating around the power jack connection. The overheating led to some abrupt(thermal) shutdowns and an inability to reboot the notebook for days at a time. That basically deemed the notebook useless for all purposes.

Unwilling to part with what seemed to be a notebook that still had some use, I surfed the web looking for solutions. That's when I realized the power jack problem has been all too common among certain HP/Compaq notebooks. The problem was well-documented
http://www.howtofixcomputers.com/bb/ftopic73146-0.html
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread173313.html
http://opinionatedmarketers.blogspot.com/2008/01/jacked-by-hp-power-jack-problem.html
and many unhappy customers have been scheming about a possible class-action suit against HP's defective design and its unwillingness to help repair defective notebooks or do a recall. The high incidence of the power jack problems has led to many technicians charging top dollars (~$200) to fix this problem. So, I sought my alternatives carefully:
  1. Replace the whole motherboard
    • CONS: A used bare motherboard (missing CPU, GPU, memory, Wifi card, fan ..) costs some $200 on eBay.
    • CONS: It will probably have the same power jack issues down the road.
    • Cost: ~$200
  2. Replace power jack myself - there is a hack
    • CONS: some pieces need to be soldered, but I don't own a soldering tool
    • CONS: Too invasive - notebooks are easy to screw up.
    • Cost: <$50
  3. Get power jack replaced
    • People have made a business out of this opportunity
    • Cost: ~$200
  4. Use a docking station
    • HP docking stations have their own power inlet and they can power a whole notebooks
    • COST: $20 (look on eBay like I have. MSRP is ~$180)
I went with the HP docking station and at a cost of $20 and a whole lot of frustration, my notebook is back up and running, even if it is not quite as mobile. The HP DC367B Port Replicator PR1001 Docking Station below cost a mere $8 (+$12 for S&H).


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Slow Acroread Startup in OpenSuSe 11.0

It takes more than 30 seconds for acroread to load on my Opensuse machine the first time and the startup time gets shorter in subsequent attempts. Why? This is not the first time I have come across this problem of slow application startups in OpenSuse. Apparently a lot of people had encountered this problem and they found a simple solution - uninstalling the version of acroread that comes with OpenSuse and installing one from Adobe site yourself. Fortunately, that prescription seems to have solved the problem. My acroread startup time is a few seconds now. Why does a very good Linux distribution like OpenSuse with its wide support and following make so many of these mistakes?!?! Over the years, I have seen Suse/OpenSuse sending buggy distributions that make you wonder if they do much testing before releasing their distro. Here are a few bugs I have come across: The extremely slow startup of Openoffice in OpenSuse 10.0 was one of the reasons I switched to Fedora Core for a while...

The Pervasive Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux Analogy

I'm sure everyone has seen the Mac vs. PC ads on TV where the Mac appears to be confident while th PC is in denial about its deficiencies. Missing from that picture is Linux which is robust, but seeks no attention because it has no commercial ambitions. This Mac vs. PC vs. Linux model can serve as a analogy for many things/phenomena. I would like to make a list of those analogies here. For example, The New York Times recently characterized Hillary as a PC and Obama as a mac on the basis of the design of their websites. The analogy would also work if you think of Hillary as the status quo much like Windows, and Obama as the new thing with great promise, cachet and appeal like the newly reborn mac. It is not obvious who would play the role of Linux, but my choice would be Ron Paul. He has some bold and independent ideas along with a very loyal following even though he has no chance of winning. PC Mac Linux Candidate Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Ron Paul States Northeast West Co...

Movies for the Idle Mind

Wondering how I fill my idle hours and days? Among other things, I watch a few movies here and there. Here is a list I downloaded using Bittorrent and am watching at the pace of a movie non-enthusiast. The rating for the movies I have already watched are shown while it is left empty for the others. Woody Allen:: # MOVIE MY RATING ( /10) 1 Annie Hall 10 2 Manhattan 8 3 Hannah and Her Sisters 9 4 Love and Death 8 5 Deconstructing Harry 6 6 Match Point 5 7 Antz 8 8 Play it Again, Sam 8 9 Husbands and Wives 10 The Purple Rose of Cairo 11 Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask OTHER:: # MOVIE MY RATING ( /10) 1 Citizen Kane 7 2 Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind 9 3 The Pursuit of Happyness 6 4 About Schmidt 5 5 The Royal Tenenbaums 10 6 Rushmore 7 7 The Big Lebowski 9 8 Monty Python and the Holy Grail 7 9 Ed Wood 8 10 Broken Flowers 8 11 Basketball Diaries 8 12 Crash 13 The Clockwork Orange 14 City of God 15 The Science of Sleep 16 La Dolce Vita 17...