Quote from my blog at
Lockergnome (3/8/08):
I find it quite disturbing, and yet somewhat humorous at the same time, that the leading OEM's of today's PC market world can get away with the confounding fraudulence concerning their products which they do not even choose to deny. It baffles me to witness mainstream companies blatantly swindle their customers into paying money for machines labeled by their associated OEM's as "innovative" or "ground-breaking" when truly these descriptions are nothing more than a blanket of lies used to effectively drain money from the pockets of unsuspecting customers. The fact that the general population has little or no idea that they are being taken advantage of in such a maliciously apparent way is enough to make anyone who has learned the truth want to erase the word "trust" from any dictionary that might cross their path. People should have the right to know they are being mistreated. The average ignorant computer user has no idea, and the suspicions of those of us more informed than others usually linger in the back of our minds as certain impossibilities whether due to lack of clearcut evidence or the self assurance that major OEM's would never take advantage of their customers in a manor such as this.
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Recently, I purchased a new HP Laptop directly from the OEM itself on hp.com. Aside from the fact that it runs Windows Vista, an Operating System that might as well be the ugly twin of Windows ME, I have no complaints. The machine runs great, no hardware problems, and overall I must give a thumbs up to HP for a great product. However, I soon discovered a sick, twisted plot hatched by HP to achieve nothing more than to wrench as much money out of the consumer's hands as humanly possible.
The model of HP that I purchased was an HP Pavilion dv9600. "The latest and greatest!" that HP had to offer at the time. I didn't bother reading (or even searching for) a list of features that separated this model from its immediate predecessor: the dv9500, but I figured it had to be slightly better in some way, shape, or form. I would have never guessed the truth, nor would I have ever guessed that a company such as HP would throw aside all business ethics and morals for a fast-track to an increase is revenue.
The carefully placed sticker on the bottom of the laptop proudly displays "dv9600" in bold characters. The box shares this feature, as does the supplied OEM software and recovery disks. Make no mistakes, you now own an HP Pavilion dv9600. Care to take a tour? Lets check out the specs, shall we visit the System menu in the Control Panel? I wonder what it has to say regarding this "brand new" HP model.
Buh...what? Huh? How can this be?!??!! It clearly says dv9500! Has there been a mistake? Has HP sent you the wrong laptop? Your mind races back to the box and the sticker resting on the bottom of the machine. There must be some sort of mistake. I wonder what HP will have to say when they learn of what you have discovered.
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Direct quote from an email response sent directly from HP customer support:
Please be aware that this is a child model of the dv9500 series and hence has been retained to the same family, and no separate dv9600 series exist. This would be the same case for units under presario V3500 series and V3600.
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What does this mean exactly? It means that there is absolutely no difference between the dv9500 and the "new" dv9600 models. All HP needed to do was slap a new sticker on the underbelly and call it a new innovation to the world of computers and BAM, an extra $300 added to the price tag. Their response also indicates that this is not the first time this has been done, purchasers of the HP Presario V3600 beware, you are in the same boat as those of us who have been foolishly defrauded by the dv9600.
OEM's, will you ever cease this obscene trickery? Or is the technological world doomed to be filled with ignorance and deception for the rest of eternity?
