Hewlett Packard, Hewlett Packard HP TX1000 Series Notebook Blank Screen, WLAN, NVIDIA GPU problems, Power ON Failure Houston Texas

I had gifted this laptop HP TX1219US to my wife on 26 August 2007. I had bought it from Frys in Houston, Tx. She was thrilled to nuts on the size and form factor of the notebook with its cool features. At about $1400 this was a great Tablet to start with. Apart from the processor heating up a lot, there were no other issues with the notebook. HP guys told me that heating is pretty normal. The WLAN worked well with my home network.

Until after a year from purchasing, it started having issues with the WLAN. It would boot up well but not detect the Home Network at times. I would simply disable the WLAN from Network Connections and re-enable it to make it work. This worked most of the times after a couple of resets. I never bothered to care that this was the beginning of a slow death.

Eventually on 18 January 2009 it stopped for good. It would not boot up at all. All the LEDs would glow but the screen is completely blank and dark. I took it to a local HP center in India as I was travelling. They were not able to fix it as they did not have any spares and claimed that they would not take up my case as the laptop was out of warranty. They said if it were in warranty they would replace the motherboard free-of-cost. As if that's their standard practice. They never bother to figure why the motherboard died in the first place.

As I was left with no choice, I ordered a replacement motherboard from a genuine ebay store for $259. I replaced the motherboard but same outcome: Blank Screen. The ebay store owner immediately requested me to ship the part back for replacement. I sent it via international shipment and got a replacement in a week. I had to bear the Custom's Duty amounting to $35 on getting my return. To my surprise the second motherboard did not work either. Same response. Blank Screen. Which means all the spares available in the market could be bad.

I was frustrated with the fact that how difficult can this be. I am an Electronics Engineer with 10+ years experience. I then read through all the blogs about TX1000 series boot up issues. Really pathetic on the part of HP. A nice product dying young is not at all a welcome sight. My wife is ultra upset. What else can I say.

Shahoftexas
Houston, Texas
U.S.A.