OT: In Faulty-Computer Suit, Window to Dell Decline

[Technomage]

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
>
>

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