After all the attention heaped on the iPhone 4 and its antenna and screen woes, two big PC manufacturers have come out today with bad news about their machines. According to Gizmodo, documents have been unsealed that show Dell shipping 11.8 million Optiplex computers in 2003-2005 with a 97% failure rate. Apparently, the capacitors built into those motherboards were almost always going to fail, and Dell was perfectly aware of the situation. It was a cost-cutting measure, one that they shockingly didn't expect to get stung by in the future. According to the NY Times investigation of the issue, employees were told to obfuscate the real reason for the failure from upset customers. In an email exchange uncovered by lawyers working on the ongoing case, one employee said, “We need to avoid all language indicating the boards were bad or had ‘issues’ per our discussion this morning.” Ira Winkler, a former NSA analyst and technology consultant, did not have good things to say about the venerable PC maker.
“They were fixing bad computers with bad computers and were misleading customers at the same time...They knew millions of computers would be out there causing inevitable damage and were not giving people an opportunity to fix that damage.”
The other fiasco was started by Sony, who is recalling 500,000 Vaio laptops today, citing temperature control issues that can distort the shape of the notebooks and cause actual burning of human skin, according to. There is a download that Sony is making available that will allegedly fix the defect, but Sony is offering free physical repairs to ameliorate the problem as well, according to Gizmodo. A commenter on Gizmodo's story reported that his Vaio actually comes with a bright yellow warning label that cautions the user to never use the computer while the laptop is touching your skin.
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Art Lebedev shows off Optimus Popularis keyboard
Art Lebedev Studio garnered a lot of attention when their Optimus Maximus keyboard concept surfaced in 2005. The peripheral touted a full set of OLED keys that were 100% user-customizable and looked downright amazing. After three years in development and many, many delays to the point of actually being labeled as "vaporware," the Optimus Maximus keyboard finally began shipping in 2008 with an obscene price tag of around $1,500.
Needless to say, not too many were sold. Now the company is back with another concept keyboard - one that is smaller, sleeker and promises to be less expensive compared to the original Optimus Maximus. The Optimus Popularis uses a "chicklet" style layout and thinner profile than its predecessor. It also drops the numeric keypad on the right, but when every key features a customizable LED display on top I guess that's less of a problem - and it saves a lot of money.
The new Popularis keyboard will supposedly feature OLED screens that encompass the individual keys' entire physical real estate with a 64x64 pixels resolution, up from 48x48 on the Maximus. There's also a long widget display mounted between the function and number keys. Art Lebedev says it expect to ship the peripheral "at the end of this year/beginning of next year" for less than $1000. The company doesn't have a fantastic track record when it comes to meeting deadlines, so we wouldn't hold our breath on that release timeframe. As for the price, hopefully less than $1,000 doesn't mean $999.
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