Dell Laptops Have Shocking New Problem

dapsychous writes "A friend of one of my coworkers has noticed a problem in Dell notebook computers (also covered in this engadget article about a problem that has been popping up lately in Dell 17" notebook computers). It seems that these computers are putting out between 19 and 139 (65 according to article, 139 according to him) volts of AC power as measured from any chassis screw vs. earth ground. This has led to several problems including fried ram, blown video circuits, and a stout zap on his left hand. According to him, Dell has tried to keep him quiet about the problem and has even gone so far as to have him banned from a few websites, and threatened him with legal action if he tells people about the problem."

Comments

Macbook has same problem

[Bananenrepublik]

My Macbook has the same problem: whenever it pulls in a lot of current, I get an electrical shock when touching the head of one of the screws. I'm not alone with this problem, there are several threads on the Mac support forums about this, e.g. this one. Of course there's no official statement from Apple :-(

I had this problem years ago with a Dell Laptop

[stungod]

About 5 years ago, I was doing IT work, and had to support a bunch of Dell laptops my employed had purchased prior to my starting there. the one in question was an Inspiron, don't remember the model number, but it was probably a P3-800 or so.

Anyway, the user was complaining about power issues with the laptop - things like it sudenly shutting down, starting up by itself and running the battery down, etc. Then out of the blue, she said, "and it's shocked me a couple of times." Like that's expected behavior.

I was somewhat skeptical about this, and figured it was a static problem or something unrelated but found out the harsh truth while I was on the support call with Dell. They had me do the usual bonehead stuff like do a hard reset, update the BIOS, remove/replace the battery, etc. I was typing on it and got zapped on the thumb with a serious shock. That's when I noticed the little scorch mark next to the right trackpad button. Looking down through the gap between the button and the case, I could see a little bit of metal from whatever was underneath. Enough charge was building up in there to arc to my hand, which can't be good.

The Dell support guy heard me yelp when I got shocked and asked me if everything was OK. I told him I just got a nasty shock from the laptop and he said, "can you hold for a minute please?"

I waited for about 2 minutes, and then some other guy came on the phone and said that they were sending out a replacement overnight and that I should return the other one right away. The replacement was a top-of-the-line Inspiron for the time, quite a step up from the one that zapped me. I figured it was a pretty good response.

So I issued the user a new Thinkpad from our closet and kept the nice Dell for myself. It worked out for everybody.

Re:Non-repro?

[CastrTroy]

An old roommate of mine had a laptop which would crash playing 3D games unless the CD drive was left open. If the CD drive was left open, no crash would happen. He downloaded a lot of NOCD cracks. Anyway, it basically turned out that having the CD drive open provided just enough extra airflow.

Re:Oh shit.

[networkBoy]

So the article specifically says once he bought a three pronged adapter the problem was solved. Sounds like it's a dell fault.
If they are providing an un-grounded adapter then they should be sure that no external metal components can connect to the line neutral, because while that should ideally be at ground potential, the power spec provides for the possibility of it floating. I'd also like to see if he is shocked by the old setup if put on an isolation transformer.

-nB