This is pretty much the norm across HP, Dell, Acer/Gateway, any of this tier of vendor. the 2 options i find is buying my own parts and building the machines, however i cannot meet these prices (usually) for the bottom line, but i rarely have issues with the parts i buy. (i thank 4 years in tech support/R&D with an OEM white-box company for this) however dell treats its optiplex lines very differently than its other lines and they are built with a better standard of hardware. usually less flexible but more reliable. in 120 machines i had one failure of a nic port, which was replaced very easily (board swap). On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Technomage wrote: > Interestingly enough, one of my clients had a newer model dell (less than > 3 years old) buy the farm as a result of bad caps > (5 of them along the regulator strip on the motherboard had popped, one > explosively so). I gave her my last remaining > working older machine (and older AMD 3200+ 32 bit machine) that actually > seemed to work *better* than the machine > she originally brought to me. > > Unfortunately, the hardware failure also resulted in her OS (windows xp > pro) having issues that took me multiple > tries and finally a full blown re-install to get corrected (the last at my > cost). > > The situation as reported in the news article is actually a lot more common > than people are lead to believe. as companies try > to maximize their bottom line, they tend to cut corners (like finding > apparently cheaper vendors for some parts of their > product line, etc). as stated, dell wasn't the only one to have these > problems (caused in large part by financial pressure > to get things done on the cheap). I have at some point worked on many > machines (and other pieces or hardware) produced by > a variety or foreign or domestic firms where cheap caps were the primary > cause of failure (computer PSU's being the most common > among them). > > anyone here know how all this got started? a little piece of botched > industrial espionage in Japan where a Taiwanese competitor > tried to steal the formula for the electrolyte compound used in the > production of capacitors. Only they got the incomplete formula > missing the depolarizing agent (the chemical that prevents both > electrolytic breakdown and oxidation of the metal strips used in > such devices). the problem wasn't discovered until almost 2 years later > when caps started exploding in cheap power supplies. > > here's a wiki on the article: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague > > what is more amazing, some of these bad caps are still sitting on store > shelves in some shops waiting to be sold or being used in > new equipment (such as the new wireless N routers and other consumer gear). > > > > On 6/29/10 4:41 PM, keith smith wrote: > > I have 3 Dells and might not buy anything new until next year. I'm now > considering another vendor even though I have had great experience with > their products and service. > > > http://finance.yahoo.com/news/In-FaultyComputer-Suit-Window-nytimes-2375403564.html?x=0 > > > ------------------------ > Keith Smith > > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > -- A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button. Stephen