http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology

Finally.

It would be nice in a way to see a class action lawsuit against this, but then again it's usually only the lawyers who get a lot of money out of it.

Well, you linked to page #2, the actual interesting thing is on page #1:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology

After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.

Here is a snippet of the leaked source of the program that created the failure :

:LOOP

CALL COUNT_LEGS

CALL COUNT_HORNS

SET /A THIS_COW_L=%COUNT_LEGS%/4

SET /A THIS_COW_H=%COUNT_HORNS%/2

IF "%THIS_COW_L%"=="%THIS_COW_H%" THEN (SET /A COWS=COWS+1) ELSE (SET /A NON_COWS=%NON_COWS%+1)

GOTO :LOOP

SET COWS

SET NON_COWS

jaclaz

Edited June 30, 201016 yr by jaclaz

FTA the caps were made by Nichicon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichicon

Capacitors were actually the #1 decision factor in my last motherboard purchase for my home server. I ended up going with a Gigabyte Ultra Durable 3 board for this reason.

Info on Gigabyte UD3

http://www.gigabyte.us/FileList/WebPage/mb_080924_ud3/data/tech_080924_ud3_overview.htm#

http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/98/tech_090302_technology-guide_ultra-durable-f.htm

(wish they'd clean up their site though)

Were these faulty Dell computers sold to citizen-consumers, or just to government agencies, and various companies?

Also, what are the exact models of these faulty computers?

Was it "every" OptiPlex PC sold during that time period, or just certain ones?

Anyone?

Such computers were sold at large, to pretty much anyone. And it wasn't just Dell either. I've seen plenty of them from many other manufacturers big & small (including many big/well known/reputable brands too), mostly on motherboards and in PSUs. It's not even limited to computers, all kinds of electronics from that era were built with junk caps.

Yeah, it's not the fact it happened (pretty much everyone who bought Intel boards from Taiwan during that span had bad cap issues), it's what Dell did to cover it up and try to avoid dealing with it. If you called them on it head-on they would do something for you, but only if you were large enough to have purchasing power. And if you DIDN'T call them on it, they just replaced bad boards with other bad boards in the hopes your warranty would expire before they got another call with the same problem.