Sony's secret kill switch: myth, rumor or hearsay?
By Donald Melanson 
posted January 22nd 2010 3:53PM
posted January 22nd 2010 3:53PM
Could there be something lurking deep inside your Sony laptop or TV programmed to break the device as soon as the warranty expires? That may sound like a crazy conspiracy theory not far off those involving the mysterious deaths of engineers, but it's a theory that continues to persist to some degree in Japan, and even seems to have grown in recent years. As Telegraph.co.uk reports, the belief in a secret timer or "kill switch" has been around for the past twenty years or so, but it apparently took on some newfound momentum amid the rash of Sony laptop battery failures, which even prompted some Sony execs to publicly deny that such a switch exists. The kill switch apparently isn't completely pervasive though, as the PlayStation 3 is supposedly "exempt," thereby explaining its considerable success in Japan -- although there's some talk that's because it's a Trojan horse for Sony's next big scheme: mind control disguised as 3D glasses.
Or in a PS3 firmware update...
@MVMNT hmmm, i have seen my laptops telling me its "time" to change to the battery before the expected battery lifetime, dunno, this gets me thinking...
@MVMNT
AHAHA!!
You guys should lay off the "Theory" word, as this is crap...
Now we all know AMerican cars are designed to fail completely after 3 years... why do you think Honda is so good?
GM knows their cars are crap they have no choice.. Chrystler cars have the kill switch acticated once you drive off the lot..
AMericans make POS cars... you die now.
@unwynd
Well if it's a VAIO, it's probably running the ISB Utility on start-up. Handy little thing that detects whether or not your running an official Sony battery. It prevents you charging the battery. Un-install the program, well then it shuts off the fan...
@MVMNT I've had a Vaio fail on me exactly 3 weeks after warranty. And a Sony ericsson cell one weekpast warranty too.
The weird thing if also my macbook failed 1 month after warranty and did not purchase applecare.
That's why I got a pc I built myself now.
@NAME Lol sometimes the kill switch in new cars is the driver itself lol
Xbox got a kill switch, just Google "Red ring of death"
Every Xbox tend to fail sooner or later, i went through 3 failures so far meh
@Rofl Lundgren
Same here on a Viao, Mini 380n unit, but it was the battery the went ka-put.
however I took apart the battery and found some smc that acted like a fuse, but the cells were still good and I used them in another radio not a computer, and they lasted at the rated output for mths. However I could NOT get the battery pack "repacked" it would just not "see" it.
@MVMNT Most embarrassing comment on the most embarrassing Engadget "news" ever..
Whatever happened to writing quality articles? It's gone out of fashion here and at Ars... It's now just dumb fanboy baiting and Pathetic Sony hating BS..
@MaxHeadroom I think that went over your head
@Kephis read post #7
http://forums.techarena.in/operating-systems/1283566.htm
@GoogleCEO If it was a legit kill switch, MS wouldn't have extended the warranty.
My xbox failed exactly one weekbefore the warrenty ran out. The dvd drive died and it refused to spin discs
@MVMNT I agree that Vaio laptops had that " laptop battery failures" and seeing their Vaio Z model: Details: http://bit.ly/sony-vaio-z-details
beefed-out with so many features, still it doesn't answer this underlying problem at all. Anyway, we could only hope that this coming myth will give new edge to the usual vaio series.
I dont believe in this. The risk would be too high for any company doing this. Once discovered, that company reputation is KAPUT.
However, stupidity is in high places nowadays, so i'll leave that door open...
@doutorpiranha *cough* *cough* SONY rootkit! SONY rootkit! *cough*
@doutorpiranha
Is does sound far fetched. But where revenue's to be made anything is possible. Sony products just don't last long nowadays. If proven this could kill Sony's electronics divison. Even the rumour could do that.
@cherryboom Its one thing to just use cheap materials to keep production costs down, and as a side effect, the product breaks down eventually, however its an entirely different thing to actually have a meeting, and engineer the damned thing to basically self destruct.
Dotoupirhana is right, this is conspiracy theory BS. As far as your percieved obsolesence of new things, people like to buy new things more often these days, which makes sense since tech progresses at faster and faster paces these days.
I believe this. Sony is the devil.
@Showbiz
This doesn't just happen with Sony. They just took the blame because they were (are?) once the biggest Japanese electronic manufacturer, selling very useful things to the world. But quality has been slacking since the 80s, which prompt people to theorize these.
In fact my cassette-sized Walkman, CRT TV and a few other Sony stuffs from the 80s still work, while those bought since the mid-90s have all but long gone.
@darkmax
So true. Hell, I've got a Sony *8-Track* and 80's receiver that still work fine. But an early 90s VCR & Cassette Walkman broke within a few years!
All three. At the same time.
I suppose they have a way to beam info into the chip to let it know if the consumer purchased an extended warranty as well? :-P
And after the original Xbox didn't take over my mind(it reminded me so much of 'The Box' from that Batman movie!) I was so let down, maybe that just put the ball in Sony's court.
@OMGYeti
Or like those game things from Star Trek: the Next Generation that ate at their minds...
I don’t think that there’s some secret switch, but there is definitely some planned (or engineered) obsolescence. A company has no interest in building a device that lasts forever. They want it to break. They need it to break.
And the PS3 doesn’t need a switch because it has its firmware updates break the machine. Duh.
@Smacksmackums Well just to be safe, find every Sony device you can and start playing Killswitch Engage - My Curse. See what happens.
LOL i dont think its true, amateur elect engineers should have said something
This seems a little farfetched, especially for such an enormous corporation. Still it'll be interesting to see if this develops at all.
Would it be a hardware or software thing, and would there be a way to do a tear-down of the hardware or software to find out?
Has no one torn down any Sony products? I mean, wouldn't this be something relatively easily to confirm?
@IO
I think you're taking the article too literally, although I don't blame you since the title is somewhat misleading.
Sony doesn't actually have some kind of ticking time bomb in there that is programmed to explode after your warranty expires, but rather they just use parts which are designed to fail after a certain amount of time. Or at least, that's what the article is suggesting.
It's all probability and statistics; you get the proportion that is going to fail as a function of time, and then basically you want it to be very low until after warranty, and very high shortly after warranty. I don't know if that's what they actually do, but if it is, then that would be how they do it.
@Junzhi Thanks for the clarification, that makes more sense.
Come on Engadget, this is a tech NEWS blog. Somewhat likely rumors are one thing, but conspiracy theories? And Telegraph as the source? This isn't really what I'd call journalism.
It's not a kill switch, you've heard your rumor wrong. The original intent was a switch to draw free energy from thin air, but it was badly designed. Somehow, only the PlayStation team read the memo and (wisely) didn't include the switch in the PS3.
If you're going to report a hearsay, at least do it right ;-)
PS3 = DLC Kill Switch
This is stupid.
@spin cycle
I agree. This is one of the dumbest things I've read in a long, long time.
I don't believe it.
The only products that self-destruct are HP inkjet cartridges.
@R haha. DId you get bit by that one toio? I ordered two replacement HP-14 cartridges at the same time... don't use the printer much, so 14 months later, I put the second (unused cartridge) in the machine, only to be told it was "past its expiration date".
No kidding, you can read about it on HPs website.
http://h10060.www1.hp.com/pageyield/articles/us/en/InkExpiration.html
If there was ever a device which had a "kill switch" it would have to be the ipod (not including the Ipod touch or Iphone). Those things would just fall apart after a year and those that did survive were so rare that the owner was forced to get the newer model or face the humiliation of being the only person with the "old" Ipod.
@Rambor
Back when the iPod Nano 3G came out, I bought 2, one as a gift for a friend, and one for myself.
He still has his, and its really scratched up but works. And mine works just like the day I got it 3 years ago, battery doesn't last very long, but it hasn't failed yet.
Before that iPod, I had 5 different MP3 players from several manufacturers, all failed. The Samsung one actually had a battery failure and burst open, leaking acid. Sony one died just before my warranty expired. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony includes some sort of kill switch, but its unlikely (I've had the same Sony DLP for 4 years).
I'm no Apple fan, or anything. I was expecting the iPod to fail too, so I could redeem the warranty and try a different brand :P.
@Rambor
Similar to the above reply, I've got a Nano 2G, got it right when they came out, and it still works great. Granted, at the time it was like almost 300 bucks so I splurged and got the heavy duty two-piece skin from iSkin for it, but other than the battery life being relatively reduced (probably a little over half of what it was originally, 3.5 years ago), it still works great!
...I also don't use iTunes at all, and never have with it. Maybe that's why it still works well?
@Rambor My wife and I have first gen iPod Nanos that still work perfectly. Of course, mine was scratched to shit the second I put it in my pocket, but it works.
@Rambor I still have two working 1G nanos (1gb)
No 'kill switch' in that sense, but planned obsolescence has long become a part of planning and R&D.
I believe the kill-switch theory is false. Sony laptop's hardware is just bad! Every person I've know that had a VAIO has had hardware problems, every single one of them, 3 of them with mainboard failures. Sony makes great electronics, but their laptops are just lousy.
@Drago True that. I have a VAIO FW, and I have had NOTHING wrong with it, expect recently. The disk drive won't read Blu-ray. Makes no sense. I'm sending it back so with the warranty, hopefully I'll get the new one with the num. pad. Hopefully..that drive won't suck.
@Drago I think it's hit-and-miss for Sony. I've had a z1 for 4+ years now and I've dropped it out of a moving car, off of some really high desks, etc and it still runs fine.
@Drago Replace "Sony" with "HP" in your post and that would be 100% correct, at least in my experience (computer tech at a local repair shop). Sony seems just about average in terms of reliability, but HP wins the prize for most failures in the most different ways. Every time I see a different one, I'm amazed that they could find a different way to make something break. My FW on the other hand is perfect except for the poorly designed power jack.
As for the ISB Utility? I installed Windows7 before I got my free upgrade and did a clean install, using the Universal Extractor to install only what I wanted (meaning no ISB) and the laptop worked fine, fan and all. It's pretty sleazy of them to install that on there, but at least it's possible to remove it.
absolutely right about HP/Compaq...they definitely have one. And they dont deny it, but dont confirm either...regardless, they sent me what I needed without getting any money from me! I called them on it! and also reminded them of rip-off.com, where all posts submitted are permanent!
@nitrous9200
how do I remove the ISB from my hp?