Posted on 06/30/2010 3:22:36 AM PDT by driftdiver
After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.
Dell, however, had actually sent the university, in Austin, desktop PCs riddled with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing the malfunctions. Dell sold millions of these computers from 2003 to 2005 to major companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, institutions like the Mayo Clinic and small businesses.
“The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time,” said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia that had bought dozens. “It’s unheard-of, but Dell didn’t seem to recognize this as a problem at the time.”
Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
LLS
Thank you for the information. I’m passing it on to my husband. This is just another example of why we should never have allowed any crucial industry to depend on one source in their supply chain. We are a small contract manufacturer of industrial parts for OEMs. I do not believe that we’ve had any complaints related to this, but we use capacitors like popcorn. I’m not even sure that we make a line item for them in our quotes. I’ll have to ask somebody to check our inventory. Would these little devils “leak” if they are not installed anywhere — just sitting in the bin?
“Would these little devils “leak” if they are not installed anywhere — just sitting in the bin?”
I suppose it’s possible but I think that they had a problem under load. Sometimes they would fail without leaking although usually they looked “puffed out”.
I have a Dell Studio for work and I am ABUSING it with mathematical computations. No issues at all so far.
For most people the U.S., the first coverage of this to hit public awareness was in comp.risks back in 2003:
The Great Capacitor Scare of 2003 (that posting also has a link to this still extant article, though most of the other links no longer work.)
Following that posting, the IEEE covered this in several articles; here are two representative ones:
Leaking Capacitors Muck up Motherboards
Dell Tried to Hide Bad Capacitors Problem 2003-2005
This is the reason that when I bought a power supply and a video card recently, both prominently said "all Japanese capacitors" on the packaging.
We have hem at work. They are crap. I will NEVER buy one for home. IF I had to buy a PC...I would get an HP. But since I don’t HAVE to, I buy Apple products :)
All computer products have problems. Whats great about America is we still have a choice on what to buy.
More like "Should have bought from any company that doesn't stress delivering the absolute cheapest systems with a minimum of overhead such as R&D, testing and support."
We had a problem with some (non-Dell) motherboards about 10 years ago. There were a batch of capacitors from Taiwan that were defective and ended up in a lot of machines.
This was probably a similar problem.
“Chinese industrial espionage done incompetently. “
wow, thanks for the info. And we still buy our crap from China? Un-freakin-believable!
I hate electrolytic and tantalum capacitors because of their premature failure issues.
“Despite what complaints I have had with Dell, my run-ins with HP/Compaq have been far worse.”
Same here. What they do to customers is criminal.
IBM had a bad hard drive product line early this decade. There were class action suits over that. They ended up selling the business to Hitachi shortly after..
IBM had a bad hard drive product line early this decade. There were class action suits over that. They ended up selling the business to Hitachi shortly after..
That’s what my husband said. So, it could be years before we discovered a problem. The caps sit here (probably on a tape), then they are installed and shipped, then they sit at the customer a while before he installs them. Heaven help us if they go into an assembly that has be be potted. We’d never find out what’s wrong. Nightmare alley.
I have so many HDDs come through that fail secure-track due to bad/remapped sectors that have to be destroyed. The bad part is that I strapped for spare drives to rehab units for resale, esp. laptops. The most reliable drives that I run across are Seagate Cheetahs 10K & 15Ks. Out of the hundreds I have wiped, I have had to junk 3.
It may not matter after next week when I go back to crazy co. after being out of commission for a short emergency hospital stay. I may be back to the contractor life sooner than I thought depending on how hard El Presidente wants to tap dance on my head.
Never mind it was said directly in the presence of witnesses that I was setup to fail. I actually learned to like playing short term contract person. I will take the heat for my shortcomings but there is plenty of blame to go around. I have had to go toe to toe with El Presidente before and actually won a couple.
I actually left crazy co. for contracting for several reasons and never expected hear from them again. A few months later, I was called several times and went back for the promised slot. I’ve done my best to make things work but knew going in not to expect any real support. When the head guy and his minion came to train me (big joke), that became blatantly obvious to all in the facility, esp. my manager who is a really sharp organizer and people manager.
I’ve turned away a few promising contract gigs. If I am still flailing around after begging for help and material support for ages, the next ones get real attention. I also keep my eye on real jobs and even score an interview every so often.
I just got my first mac, albiet a used Macbook Pro at a very good price. I like it but haven’t fooled with it a whole lot. It works great and I really can’t complain about it.
The battery is probably on the way out though. Even after a full overnight charge, it will last 20 minutes before a low power warning kicks in. I’ve played with power settings to no avail. Besides Apple, where is a good source for replacement batteries?
Swordmaker probably has good sources for batteries.
Yep. I had some IBM “Deathstars.” I have one left that seems to still function. All the others failed.
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