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HP & Dell Face Lawsuits From Exploding Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "Dell and Hewlett-Packard are both facing lawsuits over catastrophic equipment failures that lead to fires and injuries last year. 'In one case, a North Dakota auto lube shop owner claims that a Dell monitor he purchased caught fire and burned down his business ... meanwhile, an Arkansas man has sued HP, claiming that an HP Compaq Presario PC he purchased from Wal-Mart burst into flames, causing a blaze that destroyed his house and seriously injured his daughter.'"
Still, I assume many average users really don't think a computer is going to catch fire...if the PCs are pre-built, they should include some sort of failsafe.
It's my understanding that walmart habitually insists on lower prices from its suppliers than they provide to others--inducing a corresponding reduction in quality of the product at times, e.g. using plastic rather than metal gears in power tools and the like. I'd not be surprised if HP cut corners for the 'Walmart edition' of its computers.
That "made specially for walmart" logo on the box is more a warning than an endorsement in my mind.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
And a properly-made power supply should never burst into flames. Normally, a power supply has a fuse in it that will blow to prevent the circuitry in the PSU from becoming overloaded. Sounds like there is a serious product liability issue with the PSU in the Presario in question.
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CPUs won't overheat anymore anyway; they cut their processing power until they reach an acceptable temperature. If they still can't cool down, there are failsafe mechanisms in place that shut down before any true damage can be done. Modern PCs won't even boot if they're too hot.
The PSU is the most likely culprit -- although its only job is to regulate power (which you'd think wouldn't be so hard), when things go wrong in the PSU, they go very wrong.
This is kind of like sueing a car company for being seriously injured when you crashed into the pole.
No, it's like suing Ford when your ignition system catches fire and burns your house down while parked in your garage. In fact, this happened to Ford; a design defect in the ignition actually did burn some houses down, and Ford settled without a suit and recalled the rest of the product; going to trial when you are at fault is stupid. And if your merchandise catches fire without its owner doing anything stupid, YOU are at fault.
Any high electric-use device is "likely" to cause an electrical fire.
Only if it is poorly designed and/or built. They've been doing electrical engineering for over a hundred years and there is no excuse for ANY appliance to catch fire.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
You ever had a monitor with a bad flyback transformer? The sparks that some of those things make are insane. I'd easily believe that one could start a fire if you had something highly flammable located near your monitor.
This guy's the limit!
What has me scratching my head is the recent bankrupcy "reform" that one of my Senators voted for (Obama, Senate campaign bankrolled by bankers) and how the (corporate owned) media has everyone thinking that awful law is a good thing.
All my life (I'm 55) if you declared bankrupcy you got to keep your primary residence and one automobile. Now they can leave you homeless and without transportation, and people think this is a GOOD thing.
The corporate owned media has us thinking that bankrupcy is primarily caused by bad financial decisions, but personal bankrupcy is almost always caused by divorce, job loss, or medical bills, none of which can be controlled by the person whose bankrupcy is caused by them.
In the US people don't like safety nets, it appears. Score one more for the corporations and the media and government they control.
The same with lawsuits. Take the infamous McDonald's suit. "Oh a lady sued McDonald's for spilled coffee". What the corporate-owned media doesn't stress (or even mention) that the coffee was boiling hot (not drinkable) and all the woman wanted was the medical bills for her THIRD DEGREE BURNS paid. The McClown's McLawyers refused to settle. I don't know about anybody else but if I have to sue you because you're an evil bastard who won't face up to your responsibilities, I'm going to take everything I can get!
If a monitor you sell me burns my house down it's not likely to be me that sues. More likely it will be my insurance company that does the suing.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Because whenever an airplane crashes, every vendor who supplied any component of that aircraft gets sued and loses, regardless of whether or not the component had anything at all to do with why the airplane crashed, even in cases where pure pilot error was the reason, because every component on the aircraft influences how the pilot flies the aircraft.
MS supplies a component for those computers and the Windows operating system definitely influences the power consumption characteristics of the hardware, so it shouldn't be too hard at all for a lawyer worth his weight in dirt to be able to explain to a jury why MS bear shoulder a portion of the blame.
Anyone know if the equipment in question has been tested by Underwriters Laboratories or the equivalent Canadian/European counterparts?
I'm wondering if the problem is strictly a design flaw or a manufacturing quality issue (though I would suspect a combination of both). If it's the primarily the former, then I would have to say that the testing firms that put their logo on the case just lost some credibility.
But then again, I can't say that I know anyone that specifically looks for the UL/CE/CSA logo on the box before they purchase something that they plug into their wall nowadays.
Fortunately, these fires self-extinguish very quickly when you disconnect the power - if your PC (or whatever random piece of tech) starts smoking / burning, pull the plug. These failures are only really dangerous in unattended machines - then this failure can and does result in a fire.
Those little capacitors are relatively expensive, and manufacturers who are doing everything they can to shave costs discover they can replace the low-ESR computer grade electrolytics with cheap aluminum electrolytics - and then take it another step by sourcing the cheapest cheap caps they can buy. They manufactures know that this choice will result in a much shorter life for the equipment but those failures will occur after the warranty has expired so it's OK with them.
Remember this next time you buy yet another power supply for your computer. It could have lasted 10 or more years, but the manufacturer saved a couple of bucks on the components so it died after a year or two. A fire caused by these cheap parts is actually fairly rare - less than one in a thousand machines (probably much less).
The way to eliminate the majority of these fires? The manufacturers should spend the money it takes to use the right components - capacitors designed and rated for high temperature / switch-mode operation. That would also make power supplies last the life of the machine, slightly reduce power consumption, etc. But as long as consumers insist on the lowest price for products the manufactures will continue to give them what they are asking for.
Imagine a shelf at the computer parts store: there's two different 400 watt PC power supplies for sale. One sells for $40 and the one next to it speaks of high quality parts and long lifetime and sells for $60. Which one do you think most consumers would buy?