The Richter Scale^®

For the last 20 months or so, we’ve been enjoying the use of a Hewlett-Packard z565 Digital Entertain System in our living room. I purchased it at the end of 2006, but only got around to installing it a month or so later because I needed to wait for a new TV to arrive too.

The z565 is a full XP Media Center-based PC with HDMI output and we have Amazon’s Unbox software, Slingplayer (to play content from the Slingbox located up in New Hampshire), as well as a TV tuner so we can record and time-shift cable TV content. We’ve even got iTunes running so we can watch TV shows purchased from Apple’s iTunes store, although that’s now been superseded by a new Apple TV box.

So, imagine our disappointment a few days ago when we go and try and turn on the z565 and see the blue power light blink on for the barest moment only to shut off and stay dark. Turns out that the power supply is dead. I should note that we kept the z565 off when not in active use because we didn’t want it to burn out due to the warm temperatures in our Caribbean home. Ironic.

We figured this would be easy to resolve, so we contacted Hewlett-Packard’s support department via on-line chat, got the part number in question, and then discovered that the power supply for the z565, a machine which was less than two years old, had already been discontinued and Hewlett-Packard no longer sells the part either.

And, on top of that, I then discovered that the part number that HP support provided turns out to be different from the part number on the actual burnt out power supply itself.

An on-line search for the part turns up several companies that sell “pulled” (extracted from overstock/returned systems) and/or refurbished power supplies. And they aren’t cheap either. I have ordered two of them just to have a spare after I install one of them. We’ll see how that works out. And it’s not possible to use just any PC power supply due to the form factor and low decibel design of the HP z565.

However, the main point to this long and winding story is that I find it ludicrous that a machine that was promoted as state of the art by Hewlett-Packard less than two years ago is no longer supported with available parts. Of course, I could have “solved” this problem by scrapping the old system entirely, but I did not want to upgrade to a digital entertainment PC running the nightmarishly obtuse and slow Vista operating system, or build a new system from scratch with an old XP license.

It’s a sad statement on the commoditization of technology when an expensive, task specific computer can literally become a giant paper weight so quickly. At least I could find refurbished power supplies from third parties, at least for now.