News: Class Action Lawsuit for MacBook Pro Owners

As an update to a story we covered about two years ago, there has been a settlement in a class-action lawsuit for owners of laptops with Nvidia graphics chips. The settlement affects MacBook Pros sold from May 2007 and September 2008, as well as some laptops made by Dell and HP/Compaq.

Some people have received emails from the NVIDIA GPU Litigation:

A settlement of a class action lawsuit (The NVIDIA GPU Litigation, Case No. 08-cv-04312-JW) relates to the NVIDIA chips inside certain Dell, Hewlett-Packard (“HP”), and Apple notebook computers. The lawsuit claims that NVIDIA sold defective Graphics Processing Units (“GPU”) and Media and Communications Processors (“MCP”) that affected the performance of some of the notebook computers in which they were incorporated. NVIDIA denies all allegations of wrongdoing and has asserted many defenses. The settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing.

Before you go and decide that it’s time to collect your money, remember that it’s only for those who have experienced this issue, which Apple has extended service coverage for four years from the original date of purchase. If you do the math, that could be as early as May 2011, and as late as September 2012. We suspect this settlement has more to deal with customers who have Dell or HP/Compaq models that are left out in the cold.