Took a little longer than I expected, but Nvidia has come around to denying that basically every GeForce 8400-8700 graphics card powered by the G84 and G86 chipset is a flawed, ticking timebomb, waiting to die from overheating issues. They say that the problem affects "only a very small percentage of the notebook chips that have shipped" and that "the problem depends on a combination of environmental conditions, configuration, and usage model."
While there's no immediate way to tell if Nvidia is in fact lying (which would be a massively boneheaded move), as the Inquirer alleged, we'll know in the coming months. Reports of massive chip failures and an even larger hit to Nvidia's financials than the $150-$200 million it already took would make it super obvious. Hopefully the Inquirer was just being bombastic and British. [Ars Technica]