Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Dell Won't Recall Defective Motherboards

In most businesses, when a product is discovered to have a defect that's likely to cause it to fail, the manufacturer issues a recall for the affected units. Is there any reason that shouldn't be true in the computer industry as well? That's what many IT mangers with large installations of Dell Optiplex GX270 systems have to be wondering right now.

"We are not a very large company, but we have nearly two hundred Dell GX270 small form factor PCs," a reader wrote recently. "This is an information business that we're in, so we depend on these systems to get our work done and keep revenue coming in the door. Earlier this year we began to experience problems such as random reboots and power-downs with some of the GX270s. At first we thought it might be a virus or spyware outbreak, but we eventually realized what we were experiencing is a systemic problem with Dell's motherboard. There's an issue with the capacitors that cause them to start 'bulging' and then eventually burst."
http://weblog.infoworld.com/foster/2005/08/30.html#a298