watchdodogg MAXIMUM PC TAKES A BITE OUT OF BAD GEAR
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DAMN YOU MEDDLING KIDS!
I just got a 200GB hard drive from Western Digital and
was really excited when I got the thing home because
it was a nice upgrade from the 80GB drive in my com-
puter. I was really bummed, however, when I went to
partition the drive and it showed up as a 131GB hard
drive. So I was interested to read in the October issue
[Quick Start] that Western Digital settled a lawsuit
over its mislabeling of drive capacities.
I have Windows XP Professional, a WD2000JB,
784MB of RAM, and a 3000+ Sempron CPU. Please,
make like Scooby Doo and find the masked culprit
and bring them to justice!
— JoshWestern Digital’s settlement has nothing to do
with your situation (nor is it old man Wither’s
fault). WD settled a class-action lawsuit—one
that was frivolous, in the Dog’s opinion—that
concerned the classic disconnect between how
Microsoft and hard drive makers define giga-
bytes. HD makers define 1GB as 1,000,000,
bytes (a telecom standard, as well) while
Microsoft defines 1GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes (a
computer science standard.)
Your missing megabyte problem likely lies
with the OS or other hardware. Until Service Pack
1 was released, Windows XP could only address
137GB of data on a hard drive. The Dog has a
hard time believing that you could be running XP
without the service pack, but you should install
it if you haven’t already. If that doesn’t fix the
issue, you likely have the hard drive plugged into
a motherboard or parallel ATA controller thatcannot address capacities beyond
137GB. Remember, your original
Windows XP Pro disc without SP
or SP2 will not let you reinstall and
partition the entire hard drive. If
you want to start fresh with a clean
Windows XP install that can see all
of your 200GB, you should build a
slipstreamed OS disc using the very
excellent nLite utility, which is avail-
able for free at http://www.nliteos.com.THE GREAT BATTERY RECALL
Years from now, we may all look
back on the The Great Sony Battery
Recall of 2006 and say we were
there, but right now it’s a major pain
in the tuchis. Following the recall by
both Apple and Dell of some 6 million
notebook batteries, a raft of other
vendors have decided to join in on
the fun. Some of the batteries are at
risk of overheating and causing a
fire. In one incident, an IBM ThinkPad
T43 began smoking and sparking
and had to be put out with a fire
extinguisher, just before the owner of
the machine got on a plane, accord-
ing to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Fujitsu is recalling about 287,000 batteries
sold in its notebook computers in Japan and
abroad. In the table below, we list the products
sold in the U.S. that might be affected. If your
notebook model, battery part number, and bat-tery lot number appear on this list, you have a
winner. If you happen to have a nifty Fujitsu that
you picked up on a trip to Japan, or if you need
more information on the recall, visit http://www.fujitsu.
com/global/news/pr/n20061017-01.html or call
Fujitsu at 800-838-5487 for more information.
On top of that, Toshiba is recalling about
340,000 notebooks using the bad Sony batter-
ies. The bad batteries were included with cer-
tain Satellite, Tecra, Portege, and Qosmio ver-
sions of Toshiba’s notebook PCs. Although they
are Sony parts, Toshiba says the batteries are
not prone to overheating, fire, or spontaneous
explosion like the batteries recalled in Apple,
Dell, and IBM notebooks.
Toshiba’s recall affects these particular
models of notebooks: Portege S100-S113TD,
S100-S213TD, S100-S1133, S100-S1132, M300,
M400-S933, M400-S4031, M400-ST9113, M400-
S4032, M405-S8003, M400; Qosmio G25-AV513,
G35-AV660, G35-AV650, G35-AV600; SatelliteMAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2006Our consumer advocate investigates...
PMissing Megabytes PFujitsu PToshiba
PLenova PIBM
Tuti, watchdog of the monthOur consumer advocate investigates...
P
P
Tuti,Western Digital
settled a lawsuit over megabyte
mislabeling, but there are other issues that can affect
how capacities are reported.FUJITSU BATTERY RECALLS
NOTEBOOK MODEL BATTERY PART NUMBER BATTERY LOT NUMBER
LIFEBOOK P1510, P1510D CP229720-01 5701 - 6425
LIFEBOOK P1510, P1510D CP229725-01 5704 - 6421
LIFEBOOK P7120, P7120D CP234019-01 5915 - 6426
LIFEBOOK P7120, P7120D CP234003-01 5Y11 - 6424
LIFEBOOK C1320, C1320D, C1321, C1321D CP255100-01 5624 - 6511
LIFEBOOK C1320, C1320D, C1321, C1321D CP255108-01 5628 - 5Y
LIFEBOOK S7020, S7020D, S7021, S7021D, S7025, S7025D CP267910-01 5919 - 6407
LIFEBOOK S7020, S7020D, S7021, S7021D, S7025, S7025D CP267915-01 5X04 - 6307
Q2010 CP283030-01 6403 - 6412
T4210 CP293420-01 6508 - 6510