Originally published December 8 2005
Dell takes $300 million financial hit because of faulty capacitors on motherboards
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Dell will cover the cost to replace motherboards and has said that data loss will not be a factor in PCs with the faulty capacitors. The Dell boards were manufactured from April 2003 to March 2004.
Last week, Dell announced it was going to take a $300 million financial charge on its earnings to cover costs associated with the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of its Optiplex workstations.
The Dell system boards in question were manufactured from April 2003 to March 2004, according to several contract computer repair firms that are starting to replace the systems.
As Dell executives deal with the fallout from the bad capacitors, they can at least take some comfort in knowing they are hardly the only big PC makers to have dealt with the problem.
In fact, PCs from Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer and other PCs using Intel motherboards have all faced similar issues, according to the companies, contractors and several online bulletin boards.
Defective capacitors found in the Dell Optiplex workstations, some Apple iMac G5s, HP xw-series workstations made in 2004 and PCs with the Intel D865GBF motherboard have been found to bulge, pop, leak and crust over, causing video failure and periodic system shutdowns.
Dell declined to identify any of its component suppliers but did say that despite periodic system shutdowns, data loss was not a factor in the workstation PCs with the faulty capacitors.
Repeated phone and e-mail requests for comment from the main office in Kyoto were not returned.
Nichicon, which has been in the business of making capacitors for 50 years, has a strong track record, and the majority of Nichicon's products have no problems at all, HP representatives and enthusiast sites said.
The publication unearthed a problem with capacitors made by several Taiwanese manufacturing companies.
The capacitors are found in some motherboards, video cards and power supplies for PCs, monitors, video tape players and televisions.
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