HP to offer refund for PCs with flawed Intel chip

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it would offer a refund to customers who bought personal computers that use Intel's flawed chips, though the company said only a "small fraction" of its PCs were affected.

HP, the world's largest PC vendor, said customers can return their PC and either "choose a comparable product" or receive a refund.

Intel said Monday it had found a defect in chips used with its new Sandy Bridge line of processors. The company said the defect was discovered after it shipped more than 100,000 of the chips to computer makers.

In a statement on Wednesday, HP said the chip flaw affects only a small fraction of PCs sold or ordered since January 9, when the Intel technology became available commercially.

HP said certain consumer desktops and laptops were affected, along with one commercial desktop PC model sold to small-business customers in the Europe-Middle East-Africa market.

HP said it stopped making PCs with the flawed Intel chips on Monday, and put a hold on product shipments.

Dell, the world's second largest PC maker, said on Tuesday that four Dell products on the market were affected: XPS 8300, the Vostro 460, the Alienware M17x R.3 and the Alienware Aurora R.3.

All four of these machines were sold in Australia.

"We're committed to addressing this with customers who have already purchased one of the four products," Dell said in a statement, without providing further details

(Editing by Steve Orlofsky).