Palm Offers Refund to m130 Owners 222
EyesWideOpen writes "On Wednesday Palm began notifying registered m130 owners "that they were entitled to a full refund, including taxes paid on the PDA" for misleading them about the actual number of colors the product supports. The m130 was originally advertised as supporting 65,536 colors when in actuality it can only display 58,621. Owners who choose to forfeit the refund and keep the PDA could instead download a free version of the video game SimCity." Looks like a great deal for those who don't care about the bit depth of their PDA, and a way out for those who do.
Woo Classic Maxis! (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it make a big difference to people? (Score:2, Interesting)
I presume people are not purchasing these to watch movies
I think it will be interesting to see how many people ask for the refund...
Re:is this really a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is not that it can display only "58000" colors, but that it can really only display 4000 colors. That 58,000 number is arrived at by "using a variety of techniques--including turning pixels on and off and combining nearby pixels." (News.com article [com.com]) So yeah, if Palm advertised that the m130 could display 65536 (16bpp) and it can only do 4096 (12bpp), then I would be complaining. HP had the same problem [com.com] with earlier Jornadas they released, because they advertised 16bpp and only supported 12bpp (the crazy thing here is that they call the problem a "glitch", when it's a simple fact that the screens they used only supported 12bpp -- sounds like a glitch in the manufacturing process by choosing to use a cheaper screen). Compaq didn't have this problem, because they always advertised at 12bpp, not 16bpp.
In other words, the issue here isn't that the PDA can only do 12bpp, but that Palm advertised it at 16bpp and was caught out in their lie.
Class action lawsuit maddness (Score:2, Interesting)
I know it's a little off-topic but regardless of how Palm decided to handle this situation, we should all be glad that a class action lawsuit wasn't filed. In Madison County IL. there is a group called ILAW (Illinois Lawyer Abuse Watch (I think))investigating class action lawsuits and some of their findings are scary.
Verizon went through a class action lawsuit and all the participants were awarded some trivial $20 refund, or some voucher for a free month of service while the lawyers raked in millions of dollars.
These 'millions' get written off by the company and get passed to us. Not to say all Class-Action lawsuits are bad, but some are down right scary.I know off-topic a tad. Oh well.
Re:Hey (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess the real problem is that it can't display 50K+ colors at the advertised resolution, since it needs to use several real pixels to make a high-color pixel.
A pathalogical example: a 1024x768x24-bit display can display 1024x768x24 or 1x1x(the total number of different permutations of 24-bit pixels on a 1024x768 display). of course, you'd have to look at the 1x1 display from a long way off for the dithering take effect.
So is this going to become the norm? (Score:3, Interesting)
- Advertise that your product offers much more than it really does.
- If anyone complains about your false advertising (which is against the law), wait until after the product has secured its place in the market (and in people's homes/offices) before admitting anything.
- Offer a full refund for the 12 people who would actually rather have their money back than live with their underperforming machines. Placate the rest with a downloadable version of a software product that's over a decade old (after all, the company's only cost-per-download is for the used bandwidth... it's not like they're giving away physical items)
- Result:
- the 12 people who knew they were ripped off shut up because get their money back
- the FTC will never get involved over false advertising charges
- the company still sells (number of units that would have been sold if its claims had been true - 12) units
- the vast majority of consumers think they got something for nothing (software) and laud the company
- Repeat with next product release.
Looks like a great deal for those who don't care about the bit depth of their PDA, and a way out for those who do my a$$... looks like a great marketing/disinformation strategy for Palm.And no, this is not "the way business is done," this is "false advertising." Unfortunately, false advertising is only against the law if people complain.
I'm feeling some hostility here (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, they lied in their marketing, that's bad. But they seem to be trying to do the honorable thing here. If the color depth is that important do you just get the refund and buy yourself a Handspring.
But lets work the numbers here: A 160x160 pixel screen has 25600 pixels total. The 12 bits per pixel can only display 4096 unique colors. This means that in the worst case scenario, every color will have to be spread across 6.25 pixels. This doesn't seem all that bad to me. In fact it sounds like just the sort of design tradeoff I might have made. Going all the way up to 65536 unique colors is kind of a waste since you'll never be able to get all of those on the screen at once.
Of course Palm should have advertised it as a 12bit screen right from the start, but I'm not ready to hang them out to dry for this. On the contrary, offering Sim City (which is still a fine game, despite what the vitriol filled posts on here might say) seems like a nice gesture to me. Palm certainly could have done worse.
Does anybody remember IOmega and the Click of Death? Years in lawsuits that just make the scum sucking lawyers richer and richer and what do we get? A coupon from IOmega for some paltry sum off of our next purchase of an IOmega product, long after most of us had swarn off IOmega forever. Would you guys have preferred that?
they're doing the right thing (Score:5, Interesting)
This is going to cost them tons of money, but unlike the actions other companies, Palm may have just earned my trust.