Slashdot Mirror
Sony Recalls 18,000 VAIO Laptops
STFS writes "Reuters has a story about Sony having to recall 18 thousand VAIO laptops because apparently there is some risk of users receiving a small electric shock "if you have connected your PC (laptop) to external power, you have disabled your phone line, (while) simultaneously being connected to a grounded peripheral, and you are touching a metal part of the PC, and your phone rings"!" I can't begin to count the number of times that happens ;)
True, no one was electrocuted, but a phone ring is generated by a 90 VAC charge down the phone line, IIRC (probably because of the older phones which needed that kind of voltage to operate the mechanical bell). I've actually been shocked by the ring charge before, when I was fooling around with an old desktop phone with the cover off, dialing my own phone number to cause it to ring while holding down the hookswitch standing on my concrete basement floor in bare feet. Yes, I'm an idiot, but while I wasn't anything more than a little soiled in the pants, I could see how this could potentially be a HUGE problem if someone with a pacemaker or just a weak heart were to find themselves in this quasi-unlikely situation with their VAIO.
Yo mama so fake, she failed the Turing Test.
There's also a 400V (!) insulation test signal that is sometimes applied in the early morning hours (peak water-accumulation time), but it's current-limited to a very low current and only lasts for a few milliseconds. That, incidentally, is what causes "bell tap", where, in the early morning hours, some cheapie phones emit a brief bell signal. Anything that attaches to a phone line must tolerate that 400V spike.