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Capacitor leaks are serious business. When a capacitor blows out, not only does the device in question die an instant death, it might even catch fire.

So when the New York Times reports on freshly unsealed documents from a lawsuit alleging that Dell, over the course of two years, sold almost 12 million Optiplex machines with leaky capacitors to companies large and small, you know there's pain ahead for Dell whether the company wins the suit or not.

The newly unsealed documents allegedly show that Dell was aware that capacitors from Japanese partsmaker Nichicon were almost certain to fail in the machines they were selling. But the company continued to sell these parts to everyone from Wal-Mart to Mayo Clinic, opting to focus on damage control rather than quality control.

At one point, 1,000 computers that Dell delivered to the law firm that was defending it in the suit started failing, and the computer maker allegedly "balked" at fixing them.

http://www.mycomputerplayground.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=31&Itemid=83