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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."

14 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. 3 Cases - already a recall? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That means they could duplicate it rather easily.

    If you've got one of those notebooks, DEFINATELY return it.

    1. 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.

  2. What is the magic word. by starbugs · · Score: 5, Funny

    So what do I have to say into the microphone for this "melting" condition to occur?

    I didn't know these laptops were so sensitive.

  3. I've seen this episode... by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ow, my balls!

  4. Slight, eh? by palegray.net · · Score: 4, Funny

    When it comes to something I might have in my lap, no amount of melting plastic is really "slight."

    --
    512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
  5. Re:Voluntary? by maxume · · Score: 2, Informative

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

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  6. 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.

  7. Detonators by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    Acer should just exchange the computers and sell the faulty ones in Yemen.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:Detonators by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hell, it isn't even a word.

  8. Aviran's place is fishy by Simon80 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The last article on aviransplace.com (Windows GodMode features) was copied from CNet. Slashdot could have found a less ad-laden website to send traffic to this time around.

  9. More Stolen Content by lemur3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This website gets posted front page again ?

    The content is from: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml10/10103.html

    lame!

  10. 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.

    --
    -1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
  11. Not surprising. by n1hilist · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My previous notebook was an Acer Travelmate 4403 or something, AMD Turion 1.8ghz, etc; but the HDD would IDLE at 56 degrees C and peak at 62 or so, this thing made my palms sweat - the drive ran cool outside the notebook, putting in a new HDD did the same - there was almost no breathing room. This thing made my palms sweat, Acer refused to fix/replace it on the basis that this was "acceptable" Even a letter I acquired from Seagate explaining the drive was running way out of their thermal guidelines didn't convince Acer that this was a potential risk.

    I sold it for cheap and got me a Thinkpad T61 a few years ago - never looked back.