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Acer Recalls 22,000 Notebooks Due To Burn Hazard
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."
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.