Acer recalls 22,000 over microphone flame out fear
You're speaking too close to the fire
Acer has issued a voluntary product recall notice for 22,000 Acer Aspire notebooks in the US, after it emerged that they could overheat and burn their owners.
Or maybe not.
The voluntary recall, kicked off in association with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, follows a similar European recall back in October.
According to the recall notice, "An internal microphone wire under the palm rest can short circuit and overheat. This poses a potential burn hazard to consumers."
So far, the firm has received "three reports of computers short circuiting, resulting in slight melting of the external casing." None of these have been in the US, and none has resulted in any injury.
This didn't stop the recall immediately being flashed on ambulance chaser site, New York Injury News
The models in question are the Acer AS3410, AS3410T, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ and AS3810TZG. Just to help consumers, who generally have no idea what PC they're running, the notice adds that they all have 13.3 inch screens.
Back in December, Acer subsidiary Packard Bell issued a recall notice on four models due to concerns over overheating batteries. ®
COMMENTS
Overblown
Pics or it didn't happen.
A slight melting is a far different thing than meltED plastic. If the wire were to get really hot you'd smell the insulation burning off, notice the palm rest was really warm long before you'd left your hands on it for a period lengthy enough to get burned, and as the article mentioned nobody has been.
On the other hand it's nice to see a company ordering a recall before people do actually get hurt, too often the bottom line is will the cost of a recall be lower than bodily harm lawsuits and that is a bad PR move these days with urban myths entrenched in every other forum, let alone the truths of product failures.
Two thoughts...
Be careful with using the FAIL icon...
Surely this is referring to an internal microphone?
ttile
A capacitor microphone needs a polarising voltage to work, and a lappy may well have one as a small capacitor mic would be cheaper than a small moving coil one. If thisvoltage is taken straight from a power rail then a short circuit could indeed cause 'slight melting'.
Mic Voltage
Cards using the SB standard provide a 5v supply on pin2 - that's why many (mono) PC mics seem to have a stereo jack.
