
HP’s fanless Chromebox has a noisy fan inside - Doubleguitars
http://www.geek.com/chips/hps-fanless-chromebox-has-a-noisy-fan-inside-1598393
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GFK_of_xmaspast
It's "fanless" because nobody likes it.

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ChuckMcM
HP has a long history of poor thermal design practices. The entire Omnibook
series had thermal issues, the xe-3 series as well.

The original Pogoplug (Marvell ARMada) hsd a similar issue when they
discovered the GbE part was putting off way more heat than they expected.

Bottom line is that you have to put in a potential board/BOM spin for thermal
compliance, or you end up adding a fan when you run too close to the edge.

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saganus
Isn't this false advertising?

Does anyone know under which conditions could they be taken to court?

I know that it's very unlikely for this to happen, but I would guess there are
laws that would prevent this. I know they exist where I live, but not sure
about the US specifics.

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DanBC
Bottom of the specs page:

> _The information contained herein is subject to change without notice._

Not sure if that would be enough to cover them in England.

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saganus
I've seen those notices before, and I do think they could shield them for
_some_ liability. But outright lying? I don't know, it looks like one of those
things so fuzzy that certain things make absolute sense, but then you move 1
mm forward too much and then you are in absurd-situation land.

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nailer
Dyson does this too - specifically, they claim Dyson products don't have
blades. I have a Dyson hot, the base contains a bladed fan.

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pling
Dyson are full of shit like that. Its all wordplay.

Another fine example:
[http://youtu.be/MBEkP_zKKcg](http://youtu.be/MBEkP_zKKcg) (EEVblog)

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lilsunnybee
Back in my professional housecleaning days, Dyson vacuums also seemed a lot
more prone to breaking than a lot of other vacuums, mostly in a lot of simple
ways as far as buttons sticking, beater bars no longer working; my favorite
vacuums to work with were Sharks, though there are a lot of other very nice
affordable, bagless, powerful, durable vacuums from other companies too.

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thaumaturgy
I worked for a while as a vacuum repair tech years ago. It was kinda neat.

Dysons had a few specific problems. One, their cord was undersized for the
power it was carrying, and would get warm to the touch, much more so than
other brands. I never saw any repairs related to that, but it was indicative
of a cheaply-built philosophy that had lots of other problems. Two, their
rolling brushes had a simple plastic-on-plastic bearing surface (other vacuums
had a plastic-on-metal or bearing-on-plastic), and as the brush accumulated
hair and other things, the two plastics would melt into each-other from the
friction and it would require a top shell replacement. This was a _really_
common repair on these. Another problem, common to all bagless vacs, was a
buildup of dust and grit inside the motor, causing early motor failure.

A well-cared-for Dyson is a decent vacuum, but you're generally better off
getting a good Eureka for half the price and abusing the crap out of it. Those
things could take a beating.

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ZeroGravitas
The Asus when announced seemed to have a similar confusion as to whether it
had a fan or not. I wonder if some part or other didn't live up to its spec?

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tdicola
Reminds me of the Surface 3 announcement and being told the device is
'fanless' when a giant picture of a fan on the motherboard is shown on the
screen:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaOMypr9Po#t=1532](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaOMypr9Po#t=1532)

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mverwijs
When he says 'This _thing_ , is _fanless_ ', he's quoting other people talking
about other tablets. In context, he's clearly not talking about the Surface,
as he's then going into minute detail on how awesome their fan technology is.

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tdicola
Regardless, it's pretty shady especially when they try to spin it as 'another
way to say fanless is thin'. No, fanless means there is no fan on a device. I
don't see how there can be any gray area here.

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fleitz
The fan is IN the device not ON the device so it's actually fanless according
to your definition.

Perhaps there is a gray area where ON is synonymous with IN for people who
aren't being pedantic, just as fanless is synonymous with cool and quiet for
most consumers.

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tdicola
Are you honestly trying to argue my point is invalid because I said fanless
means there is no fan on vs. in the device? Seriously?

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fleitz
No, I'm trying to say your point is pedantic.

It's completely valid if you're more concerned about whether the device has a
fan than is quiet and cool.

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wfjackson
Reminds me of the time when Google first launched the Chromebox, they claimed
it had a Intel Core processor, when it actually had a Celeron. Also, there was
no mention of the extremely paltry 16GB local storage at all on the product
page.

The latter can probably be passed off as marketing spin but the former is
pretty much lying to sell your product. It's like passing off a 4-cylinder car
as a 6-cylinder car on a car website or brochure.

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micro_cam
The samsung chromeboxes they gave out at IO had i5's but I don't think they
ever did a consumer release. (I have one, it is a great little linux box).

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notacoward
I expect somebody will be "jobless" because of this.

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wfjackson
More likely somebody will get a raise and promotion for creative marketing
that temporarily brought in better sales than otherwise.

