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Acer Recalls 22,000 Notebooks Due To Burn Hazard

Posted by Soulskill on from the hot-product dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The US Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Acer, today announced a voluntary recall of 22,000 notebook computers. Acer has received three reports of computers short circuiting, resulting in slight melting of the external casing. No incidents occurred in the United States. No injuries have been reported."

7 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Voluntary? by maxume · · Score: 2, Informative

    The degree to which the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is insisting that you cooperate?

    --
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  2. Digital mics by marcansoft · · Score: 5, Informative

    Acer uses digital microphones (at least on my Aspire, anyway, so I assume they do on these recalled laptops too). Typical electret analog mics require power, but it's delivered via a resistor on top of the audio path, so it's safe if short circuited. Digital mics have a separate power connection. They probably hooked this up to a system power bus (5V/3.3V/whatever) with no current protection. The current available on these buses will easily feed a short circuited thin wire, which will cause significant heating.

    Sounds like someone at Acer needs to learn to put safety fuses between power domains, especially when you're feeding power from a fat power bus into a tiny wire.

    1. Re:Digital mics by marcansoft · · Score: 3, Informative

      Fine, Mr. Pedantic, it's probably a MEMS Single-Chip Microphone and Sigma-Delta Encoder with Pulse Density Modulation output.

      Trivia: in my laptop, they actually put two of them side by side (about 1cm separation) for an absolutely worthless version of stereo. Worse, the ALC889 chip on the laptop insists on sending it to software as a sum/difference signal. I managed to find a secret vendor register bit that will throw away the difference part and pipe the sum (average) signal to both L and R though, so if you have an Acer Aspire 8930G and you run Linux your front microphone will work normally as a regular mono mic.

  3. Re:tx2500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It actually runs quite cool normally, and performance is decent. It is not a gaming laptop, though, given the Intel graphics.

    Fantastic battery life, though. 6-7 hours real-world usage.

    It's also extremely thin and light.

  4. Re:3 Cases - already a recall? by fluffy99 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Agreed. Please, for the sake of your penis, return the laptop if you have one. Take it from me, there's nothing worse than a penis burn.

    "An internal microphone wire under the palm rest can short circuit and overheat. This poses a potential burn hazard to consumers."

    I don't think you need to worry about burning your penis, unless you keep laying it across the palm rest.

  5. Re:Detonators by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hell, it isn't even a word.

  6. Re:Voluntary? by Mr.+Freeman · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's voluntary for the COMPANY. You, as the consumer, don't have any obligation to return your stuff, but you'd be somewhat stupid not to. An involuntary recall is just where the CPSC legally forces the company to recall the product.

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