Lawsuit Alleges That Palms Damage Motherboards

schussat writes: "This brief AP article describes a lawsuit that alleges that syncing a Palm Pilot "damages or destroys the motherboards on certain PC brands." Does anyone know more or have experience with this? Is it even possible to cause damage? The article is not very detailed."

Why sue Palm?

[OpenSourced]

Why not the motherboard maker? Perhaps they are defective, perhaps they don't even conform to standards. It cannot be a very widespread problem or else we'd have heard about it before. (Well, except if it's one of the newest Palms)

That raises an interesting question. You have a problem when two pieces of equipment interact. One of them blows up. Who to sue? The one that survives, assuming it "broke" the other one? (That seems to be the option taken) The one that breaks, assuming it was a piece of junk to start with? Both?

And the answer is.............THE RICHEST COMPANY, STUPID!!!

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Re:Not a very good article

[eXtro]

It's not necessarily the motherboard manufacturers fault. In order for hot plug busses, such as USB or Firewire to work there are certain electrical specifications that need to be met. Plugging a device in generates small currents. It's these small currents that travelling through the relatively resistive substrate generate large voltages (V=IR - so a big R means a big V even with a small I). The circuitry for the active side of the bus is designed to disappate current up to a certain level safely. The device is supposed to meet certain specifications to ensure that it doesn't exceed the tolerances of the active bus when its plugged in. Either side could be at fault, or it could just be a shitty specification too. Computer manufacturers rarely design their own ASICs though, so chances are there is some mass produced ASIC that is the USB bus. It would be common across many motherboards and computers. If this device were designed poorly (or, as companies would declare it: cost effectively) then statistically you would notice a problem. Companies who use company X's usb core often end up with damaged motherboards. Company X would soon see themselves designed out of motherboard manufacturers products.

I haven't seen a Palm cradle, but if it was designed poorly - say as a huge capacitor on a cord that conveniently plugs into your motherboard's USB slot - they could conceivably be at fault. The palm cradle is supposed to be designed as a conduit for charge to flow, but only within certain specifications. I can't hook an arc welder up to my USB port and blame the motherboard manufacturer when the board is reduced to a charred mass of plastic and silicon. I can blame Palm if the design of their device is such that in as prescribed usage it exceeds design specifications.

Things don't accidently brush against ports usually, especially USB (or Firewire) ports, the electrical contacts are recessed from the exposed surface and have a rather small clearance around them.

The evils of coincidence

[rde]

A while ago, when death by mobile phone was newsworthy, a woman was on television every fifteen minutes telling the world that her husband used a mobile phone for hours every day, then he go brain cancer. Result? Lawsuit.

Earlier this year, thousand of foolish parents refused to give their children MMR vaccines because shortly after it was given to a tiny percentage of children, they developed autism. Never mind that autism is detected at around teh same age as vaccinatin' time. Result? Lots of unvaccinated kids. Probably a few lawsuits.

What've got here? A couple of people whose motherboards blew while their pilots were plugged in. Result? Lawsuit. I bet Genius are delighted; they'd probably have been blamed if the first thing our litigious chums saw after the crash was a mouse.

Hmmm, so not user error at all. Right?

[Dr_Cheeks]

I never heard this exact problem when I was doing tech support, but I got dozens of similar problems; "Since you unlocked my account my email's disappeared!", "Office 97 has broken my printer!" etc. Until I hear further details, I'm going to assume that this is down to users screwing up somewhere and trying to get compensated for it.

I mean, really; "damages or destroys the motherboards on certain PC brands" - just a little too vague there for me to take it seriously. Especially with a company that's shifted as many units ("more than 13 million") as Palm.

UART chip would get the static

[dissipative_struct]

I don't think any of the serial lines tie directly into the motherboard.... if they were gonna blow anything, I'd think it was the UART that sits on the serial port. I also find it hard to believe you build up THAT much static that you send it through the serial port and fry UART and motherboard... maybe if the Palm's power supply somehow got shorted across a serial line, but not static.

Re:Not a very good article

[Anonymous Coward]

The bubbling in the chip is caused by the chip overheating as a result of internal damage, which could have been induced by ESD.
The ESD itself could not cause this bubbling, but it can cause an internal short, or cause the chip to go into a latchup state where power and ground are internally shorted, making the chip melt and bubble.
Chips don't come from the factory with bubbles already in them.

So, claiming that ESD damaged his serial port/motherboard does not make Greg a moron.

Claiming it is Palm's fault, or filing a lawsuit against Palm and not the PC/Motherboard manufacturer DOES make him/them a moron.

Hell, with Palm's sorry-ass financial state, I'd be surprised if they'd even be worth suing.

Re:Hmmm, so not user error at all. Right?

[NetJunkie]

This is one of the best posts I've read on here in a long time. Not the usual "users are stupid!!!!" messages.

You are absolutely right. I'm the only network admin for a company with about 200 users. We do have a couple of desktop support guys that work with the end-users. My job is mostly servers, and only end-user support when needed. We've had a HARD time finding good desktop people..people that HELP the user and don't call them "lusers" as soon as they walk away. We've finally gotten good people in but we're still dealing with all the damage the last group did.

A lot of computer admins and support people forget that their customer is the end-user...not the company they work for. If it weren't for them we wouldn't have jobs. So the top priority is to make them happy. My servers could be barely getting by, but if the users are happy I'd still have a job. Flip that around, if my servers were flying along with full backup and great performance but the users weren't happy and had problems I'd be fired.

What They're Doing...

[UberOogie]

... is trying to get class-action status, with the assumption that by going to the press, they are going to get other people to come on board.

If you assume they're not hucksters, they are doing this to get people who may not have known about the problem to come out and join their effort to right the wrong.

If you're a realist, they are doing this because they are trying to get greedy and/or stupid people like themselves to jump on the bandwagon and get enough mass to force a settlement. Unintended Acceleration Syndrome, anyone?

Re:Not a very good article

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'm intrigued as to how it's Palm's fault. As far as I can see in the guys article, the Palm and the cradle both still work. Hence you could argue that the Palm and cradle cope with static buildup very well, as both have evidently experienced it and survived. However, the PC doesn't look like it copes too well with it. After 20 years of PC's though, I would've thought manufacturers would've twigged that other electronic devices may, at some point, be plugged into their computers and as such, voltage differences like this may occur.

An important point to mention is that this would still have occurred if any static-charged object was brushed past the serial port, hence the weakness is contained within the PC. The Palm and cradle simply acted as a conduit for the charge to follow, which is to be expected by both PC manufacturer and customer as they're are by nature designed to allow charge to flow through them.

I don't buy it.

[Fat Casper]

When my palm went bad (1/2 the screen stopped accepting input), Palm just wanted to know the serial #. I've never registered it or anything, so all it told them was that I was actually holding a Palm. They mailed me a new one, and I mailed the dead one back.

I called them with a stupid problem and they mailed me a new one. I'm guessing that the first Palm heard of this mess was when the reporter asked them about the suit. If they got an off the wall complaint like that, they would probably have gievn the customer a new box so they could tear apart the old one and see if it had actually happened. From a curiosity standpoint, it'd be worth the money. "I wonder if our product can do that?" Trying to duplicate the results wouldn't work. Getting your hands on a box that (allegedly) it's already happened to is much better.

Sounds like a couple of morons and a law firm willing to spend a couple of associates' time on a crap shoot. Business as usual.

Re:News: broken mother boards get broken more easi

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Static discharge is in the THOUSANDS of volts.
With people it's the "volts that jolt, but the mills (milliamps) that kill".

With electronics, even a low current, high voltage static shock is deadly.

If a static shock is enough to stimulate your nerve directly to cause sensation (after passing through a relatively high resistance of your skin), it is MORE than enough to punch a hole through the oxide layer of a CMOS chip, creating a new electrical connection (short) where one does not belong. This is permanent.

In addition, such a short can cause increased heat production which can cause thermal runaway (more heat and more current in a vicious cycle).

This can easily melt/burn a chip.

Re:Hmmm, so not user error at all. Right?

[noelbush]

This is an example of the kind of attitude that keeps corporate users unhappy with their technical support. It's not right to assume that just because you can't imagine the causal connection between (your example) Office 97 and a printing problem that there isn't one. Haven't you personally had many experiences in which changing one variable (say, plugging a printer into a different USB port) immediately precedes something else, seemingly unrelated, "breaking"? No matter how fastidious you are, no matter what operating system you're using, an OS + thousands of programs + all the variability in hardware configurations in the world is far too complex a system for you to intuitively know whether the report of a problem's apparent cause is right.

If you're in a service profession, your job is to serve -- to assume that your customers are reporting, to the best of their ability, what they understand about the situation, and to use the information they give you, however flawed, to find the source of the problem. Up with "stupid users", I say.

The argument that this company shipped more than 13 million units is hardly support for the premise that they can't screw up. And it's a cop-out to lay the blame at the feet of pejoratively-labaled "users". Both the computer hardware and software industries get away with far too little responsibility to ensure quality in their products.

Voltage running through palm cradles

[jonratcliffe]

I have a Palm Vx which charges its battery everytime you place it in the cradle. There is a mains adapter which plugs straight into the serial cable/adapter which then goes into the serial port on my pc (as oppose to plugging into the cradle itself). This could explain how a _higher_ voltage could make it to the motherboard. I'm not sure what the voltage is because I don't have the cradle with me. What you then have is essentially a mains/power adapter feeding straight into your serial port and then straight to the motherboard. The consequences of connecting the two together with everything switched on is probably similar to connecting a live SCSI cable to a SCSI interface - lots of sparks and a real p**sed off motherboard. just a thought. Maybe I'll turn all my gear off next time I plug my cradle in - just in case ;)

Re:This is a general serial port "problem"

[phossie]

For palmpilots you plug/unplug them all the time by design, which actually is kind of strange and not compatible with the design of the serial port.

Uh, no, you don't. You generally leave the cradle plugged into the serial port all the time, and the Palm gets plugged into that. The hot-plugging is all on the cradle's terms, not dependent on the serial port at all.

Dell Manufacture Motherboards?

[Razzious]

Seems to me they use Intel Motherboards. Not saying they the best way to go as I prefer to build my PC from ground up, but they do NOT manufacture their own motherboards.

No way possible

[Lumpy]

The palm pilot runs at RS232 levels (or USB levels if you have the newfangled versions) and transfers at rs232 datarates.

If the palm is damaging motherboards, then my wacom tablet, external modems, and other serial devices are doing the same....

Whoever is claiming this is either on crack, stupid, or just trying to make a quick buck.

They've got to be kidding

[DreamMaster]

The lawsuit is filed on behalf of *2* people, and they want class action status? ROTFL. Call me cynical, but this sounds too much like the people who try to get warranty replacements of their computers when their cats piddle on it. ;-)

Their computers probably just broke down and they're hoping Palm will settle out of court and give them new ones just to get them to shut up.

Skeptics

[Reckless Visionary]

I bet you that if this was a WinCE device, and the article contained similarly weak evidence, the reactions would be quite different here:

"M$ Ambushes Users to Force Upgrades!!!"

"Micro$oft Turns Innocent Customers into Unsuspecting Prey!!!"

Stop and think a second. What if the Palm claim is true? Hasn't that possibility crossed anyone's minds? Admittedly it's very unlikely, but blind dismissal isn't prudent either.