After months of discussion and feedback from the home server community, HP have today announced a change to all existing and future HP MediaSmart Server warranties which will permit the upgrading of RAM without voiding that warranty. You’ll remember that we reported that HP were investigating various options to enable this earlier this month.
A statement from HP reads as follows:
Based on customer feedback, HP will now offer a path for consumers to upgrade the memory on the HP MediaSmart Server without voiding the hardware warranty. HP customer feedback and research shows that some customers are installing multiple add-ins and/or additional software to the MediaSmart Server, which can lead to a need for additional memory.
Details
Upgrading the memory, in and of itself, will not void the warranty on the MediaSmart Server. Damage to any part of the MediaSmart Server during the upgrade may violate the warranty, however, leaving the cost for repairs the responsibility of the customer. Customers should perform a backup to an external device before adding additional memory.
HP is only providing information on a customer memory upgrade path at this time, and customers will not be able to send their MediaSmart Server to HP to perform the upgrade. Customers may be able to find technical assistance for the memory upgrade, however HP is not recommending or training authorized resellers to conduct the memory upgrade on a MediaSmart Server. HP has not qualified any particular DIMMs, but compatible memory includes 1GB or 2GB - DDR2 667 MHz DIMMs. Customers should not upgrade beyond 2 GB of memory. Other than disk drives, HP does not support any other hardware upgrade paths, such as processor upgrades, on the MediaSmart Server.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing this issue with various people at HP over the past year or so, and I’m absolutely delighted that they’ve taken the decision to relax the warranty terms to allow customers to upgrade their MediaSmart Servers as they would any other PC or Server in the home. Clearly, they are protecting themselves against you botching the job, which I think is fair, but if you follow instructions carefully that you’ll find around the net, and you’re relatively experienced in performing upgrades, you should have no problem.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I myself have upgraded the memory in my MediaSmart server to 2gb. The console was sluggish before and now it zipps along!
Excelent news from HP. Now I don’t have to worry about that 512mb stick anymore.
Q
September 25th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Do you know which of the popular addins are particularly memory hungry?I am using an Nforce2 based shuttle and upping from 1GB to 2GB is not really viable. I could not ditch lightsout but webguide might have to go.
September 25th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Nice!!! I upgraded to 2gb already and it helped a lot. I am happy to hear they are honoring the warranty. The idea of having to take out memory and put old back in, then hope they don’t find out it was changed bothered me.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
It take courage and true wisdom to admit a mistake, and to do the right thing. That’s why I never doubted that HP is going to come through. This is why whenever I want quality (and I don’t mean just a physical product, but service as well), I go with HP. Replacing RAM to 2GB is not as trivial as doing it in a laptop or big case, but it is doable with some good instructions. It took me about 15-20 minutes. Not a big deal.
I upgraded my EX475 to 2GB the next week I brought it from Fry’s. The system immediately went from a crawling to a brisk little device. As I wrote before, WHS operating system with no additional ad-ins needs at minimum 650 MB to avoid disk swapping. I wish that there would be a cure for the noise. It is NOT a silent unit. Any suggestions for fan replacement or disk noise cancellation?
Again, thank you HP for thinking about customers first.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Excellent decision HP! Thanks for taking care of your customers. A lot of companies could learn from you!