I am aware of the Toronto Star article in question. The issue in that case was a company using a bad "recipe" for the dielectric. Computers were dying on the order of months and it hit several major manufacturers. The article claims that almost everybody was trying to cover the problem up. But this was recent history, and it wouldn't impact old Amigas. I have run into this sort of problem before. For example: a vital data storage technology of the mid-1980's (tapes) started failing on the order of months when manufacturers started using a different "recipe" for the binder which attached the recording surface to the supporting substrait.
Another problem is that capacitors do not age well. My understanding is that they have a life expectancy of twenty years of so. Of course some will die sooner and some will die later. The variability may be the product of the manufacturing process (ie. not all capacitors are created equal) or of how the machine is treated. Some people call this drying out and some people call it leaking. It is commonly refered to as leaking in the Compact Mac world because cleaning it in a dishwasher often clears up the problem. The suspected cause is that the dielectric is causing shorts on the circuit board. That doesn't make much sense in my mind because dielectrics are not supposed to conduct! On the other hand, I do not know much about the operation of electrolytic capacitors.
@Tomas: We are eventually going to have to develop better ways of "repairing" our machines. While we can be frivilous today, the process of decay is only going to become worse.
