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).


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Correlation Between Taxes and Social/Economic Programs

I have always wondered if the taxes people pay correlate with the availability of social and economic programs and safety nets, not to mention the military programs that protect them. This idea comes in light of the notion that Europeans are highly taxed compared to their American counterparts, but they seem to have access to free (or almost free) education and health care while the US provides neither. The Europeans live and work at a more leisurely pace than Americans and they have the comfort of knowing that their government has put safety nets in case a disaster. The Europeans do a lot to ensure that all their citizens have comparable opportunities, and thus you are less likely to see a huge gap between the poor and the rich. Perhaps the lack of incentive to excel has stifled entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe to some extent. In fact, Europe has historically high unemployment rates than the US and the size of government there is significantly larger than that of the US....
Post a Comment
Read more

Obama, McCain and Campaign Financing

Obama and McCain had at one point both agreed to take public financing in September 2007 if they were their respective party's nominee. At the time, they were both long shots to get their party's nomination, but oddly enough they have both made it to the general election. As for their promise to take public financing, McCain decided to keep his promise while Obama opted to finance his campaign through his own fundraising. In doing so, he became the first ever presidential candidate to forego public financing during the general election. In February 2008, McCain started criticizing Obama for not keeping his promise to take public financing. How legitimate are McCain's accusations? That's what I wanted to discuss. According to The New York Times campaign finance page , Obama and McCain raised $401m and ~$150m, respectively, prior to earning their party's nomination. The public financing package is $84m over two months (Sept-Nov). For McCain, whose averaged $7....
Post a Comment
Read more

2001 Recession Deferred for 2008?

Most people remember the Dot-Com bubble of the 1990s that peaked in 2000 before bursting in 2001-2003. Considering how the NASDAQ composite lost more than 60% of its value by 2001 alone, the country was about to go into a recession. The 9/11 attacks made things worse too. As the impact of 9/11 and Dot-Com bust were about to pull the country into a recession, another bubble came to the rescue. It was the housing bubble that deferred a sure recession and kept the US in an era of faux prosperity. It gave Bush a reason to soldier on with flawed economic policies as the housing bubble gave the impression that the good economic progress of the Clinton years were being sustained through Bush's years. This time though, there does not appear to be another bubble ready to bail the US out of the recession it is in. After suffering through the I.T. and housing bubbles in just a decade, I don't think investors and people in general will be adventurous enough to create another bubbl...
Post a Comment
Read more