Dell getting heat over hot laptops

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 16 January 2007 02:59

Your IT - Home IT

Dell has been accused in a Canadian class action lawsuit of knowingly selling defective notebook computers. The lawsuit, lodged in the Ontario Superior Court, alleges that Dell Canada sold a range of Inspiron notebooks, knowing that they had defective motherboards.

According to the lawsuit, the motherboards of Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, and 5160 notebooks sold by Dell were susceptible to overheating, which caused them to fail prematurely, often not long after the standard one-year warranty expired.

Dell, like Apple, was at the center of an overheating battery crisis last year, which saw the company recall 4.1 million notebooks with defective Sony Lithium Ion batteries. In one of the most damaging incidents, a Dell notebook with a battery experiencing thermal runaway explode into flames at a conference in Japan. Pictures of the incident were circulated around the Internet.

The brunt of the battery issue was born mainly by Sony, as other notebook manufacturers experienced similar problems to Dell and were forced to issue their own recalls. However, the battery recall is not related to the current class action suit.

The issue surrounding the allegedly defective motherboards is potentially far more serious for Dell as involves a claimed in-house design fault that does not involve a third party supplier.

Like most notebook manufacturers, Dell sells low to mid-range notebooks with a standard one-year warranty. Buyers can generally upgrade to a three-year warranty for a substantial additional cost. Some consumers believe that a three-year warranty should be a mandatory requirement for all notebook computers given their relatively high cost and susceptibility to failure.