Slashdot Mirror
IBM Recalls 553,000 Laptop Power Units
qewl writes "The 56-watt adapters can overheat, cause damage to the circuit board and melt through the case, the company and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. About 225,000 of the adapters are being recalled in the United states. The power adapters were shipped mostly with IBM ThinkPad i Series, ThinkPad 390 and 240 Series and a limited number of ThinkPad s Series laptop computers and have the part number 02K6549, the agency said."
Looks like IBM is in the hot-seat now. Thank god I don't have to worry about that with my crappy 720c.
I thought we were all going to be using single chip power supplys like the Tinyswitch... they can do 240 to 5v on a chip connected directly to the mains and sink about 800ma.
They were going to be the next big thing, and then we were all back to switched mode blocks with all their coils and components and heatsinks.
Thats because the fan duct under the upper, left corner of the laptop gets blocked by your leg dude ;)
Same happens on my laptop, which is why i built myself a spiffy little metal box thingy that can be attached with a little rubber band.
Works wonders, increases battery life too, since the fan wont have to be on constantly to try to push some air thru the blocked duct.
Just if you were curious, the IBM and Apple batteries are not manufactured by the same company. Apple's are manufactured by LG Chem, Ltd. of South Korea, IBM's are manufactured by Delta Electronics Inc. of Taiwan. Some other information of possible interest: I own one of the Apple laptop batteries to be recalled and have never had any problems with it. The surface near the cpu does get quite hot, however. Not unbearable though.
I had a brick melt on a WD external hard drive recently. They were so cheap, there was no power switch, so to turn it on or off, you had to pull out the power jack, which is a complicated +5 +12v 4-pin thing which looks like an s-video jack. It simply wore out in five months. WD replaced everything -- the new enclosure has three switches.
They seem to all be made poorly lately. My wallstreet powerbook's adapter was recalled. The first run of ibook adapters (frequently referred to as "UFOs") had issues with their AC cord and were quickly replaced with the new white bricks, and now this recall from IBM? You'd think they'd put a little more effort into safety testing for something like this.
They make these packs as small and light as possible, yet they have to be able to pump up the laptop's battery very rapidly, usually while the laptop is also drawing power from the pack. Without careful safety testing, some ppl are gonna get their houses burnt down if this recklessness keeps up.
A friend of mine almost managed to burn down his house yesterday by way of a laptop pack setting the electrical outlet on fire while he was at work. While that was likely more caused by a site wiring fault than by the pack or computer, it really underscores just how much juice some of these packs draw, and how easy it is for a minor design flaw to prove disastrous.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I work for a large Toronto Employer *cough*...and we've been ordering IBM Desktop (8194-E4U) form factor NetVista models since last summer...almost EVERY hard drive in these puppies failed...the Maxtor slimline 40 GB drives (sub-1 inch).
We just got the callback for mass-replacement that we've been asking for. We've so far seen 60- 70% of our drives fail.
This kind of thing should not be surprising though as large companies are likely to have large orders for third-party parts and materials. When once source goes "bad" it can have this kind of an effect
I'll give IBM's customer service an A++ for promptness and courtesy though - they've been Golden in helping us get the replacement parts quickly (next day!)
The PSU is always the centre of many 'issues' partly because the task of designing it usually falls to the most junior engineer who has very little experience.
Why? Because they are boring and 'un-sexy'.
So it is not surprising that throughout modern times, the laptop powersupply brick has had more product recalls than anything else. On many an occasion, I have pried one apart and inspected its innards to see that there has been factory mods done to it with wires, globs of solder and tracks cut with a crude knife.
I don't expect the situation to improve either.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Somehow I fail to see the point of this recall. In normal 24 hour test, a huge percentage of defects is already found. Seeing that these laptops have been sold around 2000, 4 years ago, I simply do not understand why anyone having trouble with that particular AC-adapter hasn't already experienced it.
Probably that person either used his guarantee, or he - unluckily - met with the problem 1 or 2 years after the ending of his guarantee. In any case, people are in the majority of cases either out of luck (they didn't have any guarantee, and let the machine be repaired themselves or trashed/sold it) or it simply ain't necessary anymore.
So what's the function of this recall if noone is going to use it ? Prevent liability ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd