On 02/05/2011 05:14 PM, Luther Woodrum wrote:
In Oct, 2010 I saw a NY Times article about a lawsuit that was filed three years ago against Dell confirmed that the company was aware of and continued to sell flawed PCs. About 12 million OptiPlex desktops between 2003 and 2005 shipped with mainboards capacitors that, according to e-mail messages, Dell employees knew would fail within three years. Staff were told to avoid acknowledging the mainboards were bad and downplayed breakdowns, even when batches of 1,000 or more PCs (including those of its eventual legal defense) failed at the hose of its eventual legal defense) failed at the same time. (Later that number was changed to 18 million)
...
The problem wasn't unique to Dell and did affect system builders such as Apple and HP. Producers of stand-alone mainboards like ASUS and MSI were also affected. Most of these, however, were more active in addressing complaints and either fixed systems more proactively or started extended repair programs sooner.
It is something known as "Capacitor Plague (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Capacitor_plague).
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