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

Distribution of Wealth in the US

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I heard this statement quite a bit lately particularly in light of the sub-prime mortgage and general housing crisis in the US. The country has enjoyed significant economic prosperity and both Clinton and Bush boasted economic growth under their reign. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of the economic boom are not people from all economic backgrounds, but rather the top 10%. To make things worse, Bush gave tax cuts mainly targeting the top 10%. Being more of a numbers guy, I always wanted showing the validity of the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer statement. Thanks to Wikipedia , I have finally found it!! Both the mean and median net worth of families for the bottom 50% of the population has remained absolutely flat while the 75th-90th percentile see a decent growth and the top 10% enjoy the most appreciation on their net worth. So, if you factor in inflation, the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer probably holds true. The g...
1 comment
Read more

An Exercise in Obstinacy, Deception, and Self-Destruction

There is no other way to describe the policies of the current leadership in Eritrea. Please watch this appalling interview of the Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki with Riz Khan of Aljazeera and come up with your own series of adjectives to describe that incredible exchange. The fact that Eritreans are dying under the oppressive and misguided dictatorship of Isaias Afeworki frightens and saddens me very much. The fact that there is no immediate hope is downright depressing.
2 comments
Read more

IPtables, SVN, and NMAP

I reviewed some material on IPtables, SVN, and NMAP just for the sake of keeping my mind busy. Here are some useful notes: IPtables - best resource found at HERE SVN - best, as in the quickest and simplest intro could be found HERE NMAP - I honestly don't see in using it for more than port-scanning in a few instances. Anyway, here are a few other options that might come in handy at some point. nmap -sT/sS/ sX/sF/...[-P0] IPADDRESS(range) == to check which ports are open nmap -sP IPADDRESS(range) == a simple ping scan for availability nmap -sO IPADDRESS(range) == check what IP protocols are available nmap -sV IPADDRESS(range) == a scan with version detection Other useful flags: -O == detects OS, part of -v (verbosity) flag as well -A == detects OS and versions -v == request high verbosity/detail -F == performs a fast scan of only a few common ports Installing Perl modules Perl modules may be installed using the CPAN module or from source. SOURCE...
Post a Comment
Read more