Temperature issues and LED lights have featured before in recall corner - see
Recall Corner: LED lamp overheating - and there is now a new addition.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission warns of '
LED Night Lights Recalled by Camsing Global Due to Burn Hazard'. The CPSC has received five reports of the night lights "overheating, smoldering or melting" (no injuries have been reported).
"The LED night light contains flame retardant elements, plugs into an electrical outlet, has a white or blue LED bulb, and a clear bulb cover. "Model SBD01", the number "E314462" and "Made in China" are stamped on the back of the night light's plastic white base. The night lights measure about 1 3/4 inches wide by 3 3/4 inches high," says the CPSC.
Continue reading "Poll: LED lamps overheating" »
Our attention was drawn to this one by David Manners, on his
Mannerisms blog -
Dell Up Against It For Dodgy PCs.
It involves some evidence in a case against Dell that it sold faulty PCs, which was highlighted by the
New York Times. It seems the problem involved bulging Nichicon capacitors...
According to Mannerisms:
Apparently Dell told one customer it had run the computers 'too hard in hot confined spaces', and told another customer, the maths department of the University of Texas, that it had run the computers too hard by giving them difficult maths problems to solve.
Even the outside law firm defending Dell in the trial is said to have complained to Dell about 1,000 faulty Dell PCs they had bought.
Continue reading "Maths problems bulge PC capacitors" »
We've written about the Xbox 360 before - see
Xbox 360 Recall: Penny Wise, Pound Stupid and
Xbox Faults Cost Microsoft - but a new report has looked further into the failure rates of Microsoft's gaming console. A rather astonishing 23.7% have problems within the first two years...
The study by
SquareTrade covered 16,000 consoles and found the Xbox eight times more likely to hit problems than the Nintendo Wii, and twice the Sony PS3, reports
Information week.
The biggest reported failure for the Xbox 360? The notorious "red ring of death" - subject of a special warranty - that is associated with flashing red lights on the device and the display of an "E74" error message.
According to the report:
Continue reading "Xbox 360 hits striking failure rate" »
I live in a part of the world where I used to dread the frigid days when I had to deal with the nasty inconvenience of frozen car door locks on my 1995 VW Jetta. Solution: Hair dryer and a long extension cord. That is until the lock barrel finally corroded and fell out two years ago. (Really.)
Given my run-ins with mechanical locks, I am especially leery of electronic locking systems.
You might be too, after reading:
Continue reading "Keyless Entry Fob Sports Crappy Solder Job" »
Over two million pets in the UK have an idENTICHIP RF tag in the scruff of their neck that works as a kind of electronic ID tag. So what are the chances that two new devices based on the same technology -- which has had a good track record up until now -- would fail in three different dogs (including Barney, shown here with his pal Georgia, who coincidentally lives next door to one of the other dogs). And then to have those same devices weirdly and spontaneously rectify themselves after "xray"' investigations?
The odds must be, well, big enough to be almost impossible.
Continue reading "A Dog's RF Tag Fails - Is RoHS the Culprit?" »
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Recent Comments