Apparently, Dell has a fairly serious problem. Millions of computers they sold from 2003 to 2005 had bad capacitors. Over time, these failed, on as many as 97% of machines. Now, information about the lawsuit against the company is coming out.

Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute.

It’s probably a good idea to keep your own legal team from wanting to join the opposition. But the best bit was Dell’s reasoning for why machines at University of Texas failed:

After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.

All computers do is math. If your machines can’t handle “difficult math calculations”, you’ve got nothing.

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