14 DAY TRIAL // You all know the problems Sony has been having with its fire-loving batteries. Well it seems that they are not the only manufacturer who sells products that have the habit of turning into ashes since NEC has confirmed today that it will recall 2 lines of desktop products.
According to NEC, there have been two reports of Valuestar desktop PSUs catching fire in Japan. The cause of the fires is said to be a faulty coil within the power supplies. The models affected by the coil issue are PC-HV3007A and PC-VG11NWZEF, the latter sold exclusively through NEC's Japanese online store between November of 2003 and June of 2004. According to Reuters about 14,600 Valuestar PCs were sold in Japan during that period.
For those of you who might possess the faulty PSUs, the model numbers are displayed on the back of the Valuestar's display unit. NEC urges all owners to check their machines to see whether they are due a replacement because the problem is a real one and not a coincidence. Regarding this issue NEC has declared nothing but stated that it will replace the suspect units at no charge to customers.
Valuestar desktops are not sold in the U.S. so there's no need to worry that a similar problem will appear outside Japan. Latest rumors confirm that no one was injured during the fire produced by the PSUs but NEC said it would replace machines potentially containing the same PSU. So it's an educated guess that although the problem exists it won't affect all PCs. That being said, I don't think one should risk not verifying the serial number on the PSUs. NEC has not released any numbers regarding the total costs of the operation but they will probably do that after the problem is fixed.