Dell sued over Chinese chip error
Graeme Wearden
ZDNet UK
August 11, 2006, 17:25 BST
Consumers are up in arms in China after they bought Dell laptops
that promised to support virtualisation, only to find they
contained an inferior chip
Dell is facing legal battles in China after shipping laptops that
contained a less powerful processor than was advertised.
According to reports, a lawsuit was filed against Dell by 19
consumers in the the eastern city of Xiamen. Dell is accused of
shipping Inspiron 640M laptops which were said to contain T2300
chips. Instead, they contained T2300E processors, which unlike the
T2300 don't support virtualisation.
An earlier lawsuit was filed against Dell in late July in
Shanghai.
Faced with a consumer backlash in China, where Dell is in a tough
fight with Lenovo for market share, the company has now apologised
and offered a refund to those affected.
In a posting on the company's Direct2Dell Web site, Francis Kam,
director of Dell's client sales support in China, admitted that
Dell had shifted to the T2300E chip for some notebook models in
some countries.
"In all markets of the world where we offer it, the T2300E allows
us to provide a better value for customers who are not interested
in virtualization," wrote Kam. "Heres what caused the confusion:
We did not update marketing materials in China prior to making the
change to the T2300E processor."
As this product specification sheet from Intel shows, the T2300E is
rare among Core Duo chips in not supporting virtualisation, which
allows a computer to run multiple operating systems at the same
time.
