HP notebook wifi whitelist (card upgrade)

[thomas__m]

I filed an anti trust complaint with the European Union (abuse of market power, obstuction of the common market). Unfortunately they say its more a matter for consumer rights organisations. So i will file a complain with them:

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/ecc/index_en.htm

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/redress_cons/adr_en.htm

are you based in the US? Maybe a class action lawsuit (misleading advertisments, delivery of a faulty/crippled product) will make HP reply.

what about the EFF or similiar organisations?

btw. it is really strange that nobody from HP ever posted here, not even when they had their  "48 hours of Support"

[norrie4343]

hi i have taken an interest in the whitelist problem myself, and the only conclusion to this matter is hp/compaq bios have this whitelist to prevent you from using wireless cards from other makes and models of other laptops. i wanted to make my 6735s dual band wireless so i could run it on 5ghz  but i hit the whitelist problem and hp advised me to get an expresscard which i did not want, and they avoid at all costs the questions about the unecessary bios restrictions so here is what you do: there is a site which has all the hp bios versions with whitelist removed and they work perfect here is the link http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/7681-This-is-no-request-thread!-HP-COMPAQ-bioses-how-to-mod...                                                                                        enjoy

[pbug56]

As po'd as I am about the whitelists (and as baffled as people I talked to at HP are about them), I've done 2 things.  First I asked that a complaint be made internal to HP, pointing out how angry customers are to get very poor wifi cards on brand new laptops (we're talking a thousand dollar laptop with a 10 dollar card that even though N is only 2.4 and has throughput less then a g card, and even if you replace it with an hp provided better n card that is supposed to be in the whitelist it still doesn't work.  Second, I bought a USB based trendnet 450 N dongle.  I hate to have to use an external one but it does work very, very well so far, though a pain to install.  Much of the time I read a full 450mbps.  On the other end I nave a netgear wndr4000.  Good combo.  And because of my complaint (long story behind it) HP paid for the trendnet adaptor.  

[johnnytwodog]

"If there is a supported WLAN card you can upgrade to listed in the service manual for your notebook, then you are free to upgrade to that."

I also call BS. The BS meter is WAAAAAAAYYYYYYY Pegged.

I bought a DV7-6b78us. The service manual lists (7) SEVEN different WLAN cards. I called tech support to confirm that the listed Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 HP Part # 631956-001.

Tech support said it would work. I bought it, installed it, and it WAS WHITELISTED.

I called tech support. Reloaded drivers and bios, defaulted bios. Still WHITELISTED. 

Tech support said "maybe you got a defective HP Part # 631956-001".

I called HP Parts to order a new one. They said HP Part # 631956-001 does not work in the DV7-6b78us. Only the wlan card in the pc is supported. None of the others in the manual are supported.

I called back tech support. Spoke with all 10 idiots in India. They all said only the Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000 802.11b/g/n 1×2 WLAN module 593530-001 shipped with the POS DV7-6b78us will work. None of the other WLANs listed in the service manual work.

Why don't they work? Because they are WHITELISTED in the bios.

There is no FCC isue, because HP sells this laptop with the Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 HP Part # 631956-001. But you must buy it from the HP site. $400 premium over Office Depot. For a $10 part.

I spoke with HP sales. They called it a sweet deal to buy from HP. Sweet for HP.

There is one AND ONLY ONE reason for the whitelist. To force the consumer to buy heavily marked up options  from HP.

HP is NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

[pbug56]

A number of people have noticed that the 6230 is supposed to be in the whitelist (and therefore work) for a wide range of DV7 and DV6 laptops.  They buy one, discover the 1000 (which is 2.4 ghz only and doesn't even get up to 150mbps), and freak.  They call HP, they order the 6230 by the part number listed in the service manual and they get something of another brand and nearly as bad as the 1000.  They then order the 6230 off the web from someone and discover that HP sold 6230's have an encoded number needed by the whitelist so separately sold 6230's won't work.  They then call HP and order a 6230 by name (which now has a different HP part number) and find that this 6230 won't work either.

In my case, an old DV9933CL was replaced under warranty by HP.  It had come with the 4965agn, which when it worked properly was pretty fast).  But after numerous repair visits to HP for oddball items like the webcam, HP had replaced the mobo among other parts and then the 4965agn stopped working properly.  Finally, given its age, HP replaced the 9933 with a new DV7.  The specs for the DV7's don't tell you that they come with only a 2.4ghz N card, so I was a bit shocked when I fired it up and barely got G speeds to my 450 router.  Long talk with an HP case worker I was already dealing with; she was as shocked as I was to find what HP was shipping for N cards in the DV6 and DV7 systems.

I did finally figure out why.  HP came out with the envy - the gussied up laptop series that backlights the keyboard for an extra 30 to 40% higher price for otherwise mostly the same specs.  Except for one item - the wifi card.  Guess what - it comes with a 6230.  Confirmed that personally playing with one in a store.  So for 3-400 more bucks, they give you a wifi card worth 10 to 15 bucks more plus the lighted keys.

I talked to the case worker about how angry people are getting about this, and asked her to present this up the food chain at HP, to tell them a really fast $1000 or more laptop with a near DOA wifi card made HP look really stupid.  She said she'd try.

In the meantime I've got my external trendnet thing that fortunately works very, very well so far.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

.

[pbug56]

Do you think anyone at HP reads the CIO emails?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

.

[pbug56]

What gets me mad is 1. they block you from upgrading on your own, and 2. they use such cheap junk now to begin with.  The 1000 is garbage.  The 6230 is ok.  But they also now only put in 2 antenna's where they used to put in 3.  So your internal, unless you fish in a 3rd antenna, is limited to 300 when the current state of the art is 450 to 600.  I also get upset because it has become obvious that some marketing idiot came up with the idea of crippling the DV6 and DV7's in order to encourage sales of the badly overpriced Envy's.

FYI, I do a lot of inter pc file transfer.  I have a 450 mbps router (replacing the horrific Linksys WRT610N).  On my desktops Ihave gigabit ports as does the router.  So file transfers between pc's tend to be pretty fast.  So that's why I got a 450mbps external wifi adaptor for the latest laptop.

I did use the link to send HP 2 messages.  One on this subject, and one on their awful 8500 series AIO's (my first of which came out of the box unusable).  I wasn't nasty, but I did point out that they are losing a lot of customers this way.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Please keep us posted on what replies you get from HP.

Hopefully it won't just be a boilerplate answer to these issues.