Originally Posted by GodOSpoons

From today's wsj.com (Sorry... no free rides, here). Thought it was helpful for the conversation.

Timothy

Kinda makes me wish I had seen the fizzle. Sounds really cool. I have to blame the user, though--I ALWAYS read the machine's power configuration.

Electronics With Borders: Some Work Only in the U.S.

By DAVID PRINGLE and STEVE STECKLOW
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 17, 2005; Page B1

To save money, Chris Caine, a resident of Fiji, always orders computers made by Apple Computer Inc. from the U.S., where they are significantly cheaper. Recently, he purchased Apple's newest desktop, the iMac G5.

Soon after the computer arrived from the U.S. he plugged it in. There was "a big bang, like an explosion, and white smoke out of the speaker grilles," he says. The machine then died.

Mr. Caine didn't have a defective unit. It turns out that, unlike the 17 other Apple computers that he had purchased in recent years for his DVD-rental business, the new iMac G5s sold in the U.S. are designed to work only with the electric power systems in the U.S. and Japan, which pump out a lower number of volts than in most other countries.

Mr. Caine fell foul of a little-noticed trend: Some consumer-electronics companies are designing products so they will work only in the U.S. For example, some of the latest printers from Hewlett-Packard Co. refuse to print if they aren't fed ink cartridges bought in the same region of the world as the printer. Nintendo Co.'s latest hand-held game machines are sold in the U.S. with power adaptors that don't work in Europe.