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We’re now conveniently located near the corner of Whitcomb and Westnedge behind the Burger King. We are the upper suite in the rear of the building. If you need driving directions, please don’t hesitate to call!

Geek Easy Computers
435 Whitcomb St. UL 201
Kalamazoo, MI 49001
(269)548-TECH (8324)

Nvidia Settlement

Possible Repair or Replacement Reimbursement

If you have a bricked laptop sitting at home with video problems, NVIDIA might spring for a replacement. Last week was the start of the claim period for a class-action lawsuit filed against the popular graphics manufacturer NVIDIA for some faulty laptop graphics processors and chipsets produced in the last five years. The affected laptops were manufactured by Apple, Dell and HP-Compaq between November 2005 and February 2010.

Symptoms of the flaw include distorted or scrambled video on the computer screen or no video at all. Some of the Dell and HP systems will have sporadic video issues or display garbled text, inserted random letters, lines or other images. The flaw has even been responsible for some HP systems with NVIDIA MCPs to not see the computer’s internal wireless card or detect WiFi networks properly.

The faulty chips were sent out on motherboards in some very popular computer models. For Dell the potentially flawed processors were used in select models of the Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, Vostro and XPS lines. Apple used the faulty chips in some 15-inch and 17-inch Macbook Pro laptops manufactured between May 2007 and September 2008. Hewlett Packard sent out a number of defective systems in their dv2000, dv3000, dv6000 and dv9000 lines to name a few, and a number of similar Compaq laptops are also potentially affected.

The settlement agreement provide a few options for consumers who purchased the defective hardware ranging from repair or replacement. If you have paid for repairs to one of the damaged computers, you can file a claim to be reimbursed for at least a portion of the repair. The settlement amount has already been reached and will be distributed to all applicants with valid claims in proportion to the cost of their respective repairs. The replacement option gives users the ability to send their faulty Dell or Apple laptops to have the defective part replaced free of charge. For Hewlett-Packard owners, the replacement option is a whole new computer. Laptops will be replaced with a new Compaq CQ50, and HP tablet PCs will be replaced with ASUS Eee tablets.

As of this writing, the date for exclusion from the class-action suit has passed. So if you have one of the affected computers, the claim period going on right now is your only chance to seek remedy from NVIDIA. The claim period will continue for the next few months, but all claims must be postmarked by March 14th of this year to be considered valid. Obviously not all models are affected, and the computers must be experiencing one of the aforementioned issues to qualify. You can check the list of models and get more information on the class-action suit by visiting the suit’s Website at: https://www.nvidiasettlement.com/

And if your laptop isn’t listed on the site, don’t panic! Geek Easy technicians are trained to deal with all sorts of laptop display issues, and we’re here to help. Feel free to give us a call or stop in for all your computer and technology needs.

Geek Easy Computers
Making Technology Easier

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