[snowsislander]

The swollen capacitor problem originated in Chinese industrial espionage done incompetently. A Chinese chemist working for a Japanese company (Rubycon Corporation) stole an electrolytic formula and sold it in Taiwan and Red China, but a key stabilizer was omitted in the stolen formula.

For most people the U.S., the first coverage of this to hit public awareness was in comp.risks back in 2003:

     The Great Capacitor Scare of 2003 (that posting also has a link to this still extant article, though most of the other links no longer work.)

Following that posting, the IEEE covered this in several articles; here are two representative ones:

     Leaking Capacitors Muck up Motherboards

     Dell Tried to Hide Bad Capacitors Problem 2003-2005

This is the reason that when I bought a power supply and a video card recently, both prominently said "all Japanese capacitors" on the packaging.

[vanilla swirl]

“Chinese industrial espionage done incompetently. “

wow, thanks for the info. And we still buy our crap from China? Un-freakin-believable!