Dell Assures Users They're Safe With The Jolting XPS Notebooks

Dell has finally issued a response regarding its notebooks that have been reported to give their users frequent electrical shocks. Users previously complained on the manufacturer's forums that they either receive a continuous electrical tingling, or they suffer brutal electrical discharges whenever they touch the aluminum casings of the XPS M1330 and XPS M1530 notebook models.

The company finally acknowledged in a Knowledge Base ticket that "a tingling sensation may be noticed when connecting devices to Dell notebook computers or printers and touching exposed metal parts of the devices being connected or the parent device."

However, the company refused to admit that these electric jolts might be dangerous for the human operator. According to previous evaluations, the electric discharges are the result of a two-pronged connection between the main lead and the power adapter, which is not grounded because there is no available third pin on the power adapter. The jolts occur due to the electrical potential that accumulates between the laptop's aluminum coating and the earth.

According to the company, "the voltage does not present any risk of injury to the user," but I strongly doubt that some user paid for this kind of "bonus" feature, as well as I doubt that any sane user would find pleasure in this "side effect". One more thing: although Dell states that there is no risk of injury, a voltage test shows that the notebook's case may give off more than 100 volts of power, which totally contradicts the company's statements.

The simplest solution to solve the problem is to provide the users with three-pronged power adapters that would connect the notebook case to the ground. However, the manufacturer has been shipping two-prong (unearthed) power adapters with the majority of its systems worldwide for some time and thus it cannot immediately provide such a great number of customers with the proper, three-pronged adapters.

Dell is currently looking for a solution to sell properly-earthed adapters to its laptop customers at a discounted price.