Acer recalls thousands of laptops over "burn hazard"

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 9 Jan 2010 at 00:25

Acer has recalled tens of thousands of laptops after admitting they pose a "burn hazard".

The fault lies with an internal microphone wire, which can short circuit and overheat when "extreme pressure" is applied to the laptop's palmrest.

"Acer has received three reports of computers short circuiting, resulting in slight melting of the external casing," the company's voluntary recall notice states. "No injuries have been reported."

The recall affects six different Acer Aspire laptop models: the AS3410, AS3410T, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ and AS3810TZG.

Customers with those models are being urged to check their serial number on the Acer support site to check if their machine is affected.

Last month we reported on a PC Pro reader who claimed his Acer TravelMate 2400 had caught fire but that incident involved the rear of the screen rather than the palmrest. Acer strenuously denied the incident had been caused by a manufacturing fault, insisting that an external heat source was to blame.