Dell Battery Recall- Win for the Web

conq writes "BusinessWeek has an article on how the Dell recalls show the true power of the web and how the attack on the Dell batteries evolved on the web. From the article: But in cyberspace the race was on to dig out every last byte of 'truth' about those flaming PCs. Gadget news blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget spat out facts and rumors with equal zeal. They were relentless advocates for the consumer, too. On July 31, Engadget posted photos of a Dell notebook that had caught fire in Singapore. Its comment: 'We'll keep posting these until we see a recall or a solution, so please, Dell, treat 'em right.'"

Here is what I would like to know...

[cr0sh]

How is it that we netizens seemingly can effect change on an issue like this, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty minor, but are at the same time seemingly unable to effect changes on issues which really effect us (bad laws governing the internet, DRM, etc)? It seems like all we care about are things which cause problems with our material goods, rather than things which can potentially effect us personally...

Prior Art

[ZedNaught]

My guess is that the Business Week author is too young to remember how a 1994 post by Terje Mathisen to comp.sys.intel on USENET ultimately resulted in the recall of millions of Intel Pentium chips for the fdiv bug.

Re:assuming the web was the cause...

[TheLink]

We may never know.

But it could have initially been: Dell going to Sony saying: "We have a problem", and Sony saying "Oops! OK we've changed stuff, should be fine now, we pay for whatever blows up ok?". At this point if Dell wants to recall, Dell has to pay a fair bit - since not enough people are convinced it's a big enough problem, and Sony only commits to paying for what blows up.

Then when stuff hits the fan (theinquirer, etc), Dell goes to Sony and says: "Look, all bets are off, it's your frigging fault and you know it, if people sue us, we're gonna sue you, so fix it". By this time Apple (and maybe other manufacturers) probably saying to Sony- hey you know that "Dell problem"...

So Sony pays.

In my opinion Sony has fallen to great depths. Wonder if they've taken the worst of the Japan and USA cultures rather than the best ;). They might be adding the worst of the Chinese corporate cultures too...