HP notebook wifi whitelist (card upgrade)

[layr]

People, if only the wifi whitelist is bothering you, go with the modded bios mentioned before. I seriously doubt you're going to achieve anything by sending letters to HP, although it couldn't hurt either. More than likely this policy is doing good for the company which is why I don't believe they're going to change anything that soon.

[Huffer]

Gotta weigh in here, too. I have been on this and the Business Forum for about 10 years. This is the one question that keeps coming up and I understand the technical explanation re the FCC, but the clincher for me is that almost no other laptop maker reads the rules as restrictively as HP. Lenovo also uses a BIOS whitelist but it is very easily defeated with a simple program widely circulated on the internet (not a completely hacked BIOS). I would like to see HP either stop this whilelist process or provide some cogent explanation as to why they persist in it. This is not a reason in my mind not to recommend HP product to 99% of users, but it keeps me from recommending HP laptops to advanced users and keeps me from buying one for personal use. 

[thomas__m]

Imho blaming the FCC is FUD. All parts (mainboard, pcie spec, pcie wlan module spec, antenna spec) comply with the FCC. If that wouldn't be true nobody would be allowed to sell / operate wlan cards in a normal PC.

HP and others use this kind of market obstruction to circumvent competition and form a local (non natural) monopoly to keep prices up.

Also HP did not advertise that these Models are crippled products. So it is also misleading advertisement.

Therefore its a matter of consumer rights.

Imagine GM would tell you that you can only use one kind of gas station. 

So where ever you are contact your local authorities or consumer rights organizations. e.g. the EFF or similar.

It seems HP doesn't care... also not in this forum, {Content Removed: legal discussion}

Or what about an online petition? "No more whitelists"

Of course i use a "hacked bios"  (voiding warranty, i guess), but that is not the point.  I want to buy a non crippled product, which works as intended and advertised. If it says "pcie slot" the slot should be usable.

I don't want to spend time to hack a product only that i can use it properly .... that is ridiculous.

{Content Removed}

[Paul_Tikkanen]

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[pbug56]

About 18 months ago, I bought a VAIO laptop for my daughter for college.  According to the official spec sheet from Sony it came with a specific, decent quality Intel N card, one that I was happy with.  Got it home, powered up, and inside was a very low end Atheros card, even worse then the Intel 1000.   Again, top througput on 2.4 only of about G speed on a supposedly N card.  Returned it to Costco, complained to them about being cheated by Sony.  The unit disappeared very suddenly and quickly from the Costco web site.  A newer model popped up.  Its spec sheet did not specify what N card it had.  It wasn't a great one in reality but it was usable.

I have a now old HP DV9030.  Came with a G card.  I wanted to upgrade to N; that's when I found out about the whitelist nonsense.  When weeks ago I found myself suddenly about to get a DV7, the specs only said N.  No more.  I was quite upset to find the Intel 1000 with 40 to 50 mbps throughput against a 450mbps router.   So I did the obvious research in the manual and saw the 6230 listed.  But as we know, the whitelist does not actually cover any available 6230.  And I was not happy to discover why - that the decent N card is only available in the Envy models now.  And even then it's crippled by only having 2 antenna wires.  Talk about cheap.  HP saves about $1 by eliminating one antenna (in real life probably pennies), and maybe $10 to $15 by putting in a cheap N card.  All this on a laptop that in my case MSRP'd at about $1200.  Talk about arrogant marketing.

[layr]

Paul, as I see the issue, Thomas is both wrong and correct. Indeed there's logical explanation for the wifi card whitelist. Yet the whitelists for other hardware, namely the GPU, seem to be serving the ideas mentioned by Thomas.

[norrie4343]

unfortunately hp are like politicians because they will always avoid giving a straight and honest answer on this matter, my 6735s wireless card was upgraded to a dual band broadcom BCM94321MCP3 dual band card which was hp approved but it still would not work on my laptop because they only allowed a couple of low end wireless g cards to be used on my particular model,  i changed my bios to the whitelist removed bios which is listed on my previous post and now it works perfect at 5ghz.  i also have a toshiba sat pro which allowed me to put a Intel 4965AGN dual band card in and it worked with no fuss at all. so it is just a hp thing but i do not know if they are breaking any laws or not but i would imagine that a company the size of hp would have this covered.

[thomas__m]

HP can test and validate all day long... however the FCC or other reg. authorities don't mention whitelists.

ETSI EN 300 328 states that no new test is necessary if the same antenna is used.... in that case HP should make an antenna whitelist 😉

Intel also has a declaration of conformity for each of their wlan products (e.g. 5300 ) and they sell them without an antenna....  so does Intel violate FCC regulations ? 

The user is responsible to comply with regulations. Even with validated HP wlan/antenna combinations it is easy to boost EIRP by using an external antenna...

i am getting your point, but i am not convinced that this FCC FUD is really true. It is maybe just a cheap excuse for HP....

(also the FCC is not regulating the whole world....)

Unfortunately HP doesn't read their own forums. Maybe we should ask the FCC / ETSI about these details.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

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[johnnytwodog]

"HP is a company based and headquartered in the United States of America, and therefore has to play by the rules and regulations of the United States."

Yes, that is a fact.

What is also a fact is HP lobbyists push for those regulations. Who do you think writes industry regs? Congressional commitees? Nope, the industry writes the regs.

The industry writes the regs to benefit themselves, and exclude others. Unfortunately it is the way things are done in the world unless it is egregious in the extreme to much public outcry. If the public does not understand the regs, anything goes.

So HP can fall back on "Regs" to justify its Whitelist.

Why doesn't HP publish the fact that it is "crippling" its products?

HP describes the Whitelist as "Protecting Data, System Integrity, and Identity Protection." The land of rainbows and sugarplums. Nowhere in the HP documents or website does it mention that Whitelisting prevents user upgrades.

Who cares if HP doesn't read this forum. They have heard from me PLENTY. This forum is a WARNING to potential HP buyers.

Paul thinks I am unprofessional. OK. Then what would HP be when they publish BS specs, manuals, and give BS advice and info from tech support, sales and parts?

Unethical would be putting it kindly.

The only difference between Bernie Madoff and HP is that Bernie had access to a lot more money.

My advice is not to buy HP unless you plan to never upgrade and plan to use it exactly as out of the box. 

I returned my DV7-6b78us for a full refund. If it could have been upgraded with the Intel Centrino 6320, as the service guide and tech support originally said it could, it would have been an incredible machine for me. For lack of a $10 part it was junk.

Caveat Emptor.

Funny how HP did not start to lose billions in the PC market until after they started the Whitelist fad. They built their own coffin. H&P would be ashamed. They had "I" on their chests for integrity.

I've flashed my own bios back in the old days of the 8088. But I would not recommend that to anyone but a real techie. Flash with a bad or wrong bios and your PC becomes a brick.

I could tune up my own car when cars had points and carbs. I wouldn't dream of doing it now. Likewise I would not mess the bios unless I had some ironclad program.