"In March, less than six months after I purchased it, I opened up my Dell Inspiron one day," the reader wrote. "Immediately, I could see the screen was badly cracked. The notebook had been sitting there untouched on my desk since the last time I had used it, at which time it was working fine. But now the screen was too distorted to use."

Even at the time, the reader could think of only one explanation. "I had always thought that the notebook ran rather warm, but I attributed this to the wide screen and other features," the reader wrote. "But when I saw what had happened, I was certain it must have been heat from the battery after I closed the lid that had caused the LCD to crack."

As the laptop was still under warranty, the reader called Dell and shipped it in. Of course, he was soon told that Dell had determined the cracked LCD was due to customer abuse and repairs would therefore not be covered under his warranty. "They wanted almost a thousand dollars to replace the screen," the reader wrote. "I told them I could buy a better computer for not much more money, which proved to be the case. After many phone calls and e-mails, I told them to keep it. I hope Dell is enjoying my Inspiron."

One has to wonder how many other Dell customers already had a similar experience with a Dell laptop that would now be eligible for the recall. When an LCD is cracked, the easy thing for Dell - or any other portable manufacturer, for that matter - to do is to blame it on the customer. And perhaps that will turn out to be the real lesson of the Dell recall. A flawed product is the manufacturer's responsibility only after enough customers force them to acknowledge it.