Newly unearthed documents from a lawsuit filed three years ago against Dell have today confirmed that the company was aware of and continued to sell flawed PCs. About 12 million OptiPlex desktops between 2003 and 2005 shipped with mainboards capacitors that, according to e-mail messages, Dell employees knew would fail within three years. Staff were told to avoid acknowledging the mainboards were bad and downplayed breakdowns, even when batches of 1,000 or more PCs (including those of its eventual legal defense) failed at the same time.
