Following up on a string of recent reports that Dell laptop batteries may sometimes self-immolate without warning, BoingBoing reader Humphrey Cheung says, "One of our forum posters has a story and pictures of a burnt Dell laptop. He also has pictures of the smoke covered office, fire trucks and the burnt battery." Link.
I'm no expert on this stuff, but as a former Dell bitter victim owner and user (now a happy Mac convert) I have a hunch this is because everything Dell is made in Hell.
Reader commentses: several follow after the jump….
Mark says,
If you put this exploding battery issue together with the Tesla electric car, which uses a whole bunch of laptop batteries, it seems like you could end up being a pretty toasty fritter in the middle of the Santa Monica freeway. And potentially take out a good chunk of the surrounding neighborhood. Link.
Karol Kulaga says,
Xeni – Spontaneously combusting laptops aren't the only problem – PDAs and
pretty much any device that uses lithium batteries can ignite in a rather
dramatic way.Although I can't comment about the specifics of my case due to a non
disclosure agreement, I can tell you that a PDA with a lithium ion battery
burst into flame without any warning, apparent cause or reason while I was
wearing it, lighting my shirt on fire and singing some chest hairs before I
quickly ripped my shirt off and tossed the whole thing into the kitchen
sink. Then things got really interesting.Needless to say, it scared the shit out of me. I can tell you that the
company did everything to cover their ass and refused to return the PDA once
I sent it to them (yes, a really stupid move on my part).The thing that worried me the most was that the company would not deny in
the settlement or in our discussions over the phone that this was a known
defect in their products – and I'm not talking about the drones in the tech
support department, but a senior engineer, their lawyers and presumably one
of their vice presidents who signed the settlement.I would advise anyone who has an incident like this to consult an attorney,
although the terms of my settlement weren't exactly unfavorable, I am sure
that I could of have gotten a better deal if I hadn't been an idiot and
called tech support (and spending several hours on hold that night). Their
behavior and the apparent rash of recent cases really makes me wonder how
common these incidents are and how many have been covered up by NDA's.
BTW, the company was not Dell.
Adam Carroll, Assistant Adjunct Professor at UCSF Center for Advanced Technology, says:
Thought you'd find this amusing: Feedburner placed a Dell ad in the RSS feed for your post on the Dell battery explosion (screenshot attached). Maybe in the future: everything that matches 'dell' but not 'dell is made in hell'?
Peter Reed says,
This is a web site describing a mac book doing the same thing as the dell that you have pictured in a article as well. I think that is a problem of the battery rather than the machine itself.
