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Laptop Explodes at Japanese Conference
An anonymous reader writes "A laptop reported to be a Dell burst into flame and was caught on camera during a recent Japanese conference. Guess this laptop could be a poster child to prove that laptops really can cause sterility if they are on your lap."
Mow your lawn
Make your lunch
Give you a hug
Smile
Hold your hand
Carry your bag
Laugh
Get sick
Cry
Call you at work
Run into you
No matter how many laptops you buy, you won't be able to share your life, your lessons, your beliefs, or your ideas with a laptop. Though if you get sterilized, at least you can adopt a kid.
GPL Deconstructed
When you've seen a photo like that you're gonna pay a lot more attention to a product recall.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
Just a quick point:
There's a reason all the big OEMs stopped calling them laptops. They really don't intend fo you to put it in your lap. I used to work for notebook support for a company, we actually had some people get burned by the more powerful notebooks because they had them in their laps for too long. It's even in the documentation that they can get too hot to be comfortably used in the lap.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
So, if your battery weighs two pounds, you have the potential energy of roughly a third pound of TNT -- more than enough to cause some serious damage.
I for one don't want to be killed by keyboard shrapnel!
Very obviously a LiIon/LiPoly/LiEtc battery explosion. They go off like small bombs when abused to an extreme (short circuit, overcharge). My guess is that something went terribly wrong with the charge controller, and fried the pack. The phenomenon isn't news, just that some other failure caused it. It's unfortunate that it happened, but it's a good lesson about why extra care is needed with volatile technologies. As a EE, I can say with authority that it's easy to design a very safe battery management system. It's when production cost reduction folks get involved and cut corners that things often go wrong, or when someone thinks they can optimize something without a full understanding
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
you forgot about (D) Possible backlash and bad PR from not issuing a recall.
Sure 10 people get hurt by the computer and you settle out of court with 9 of them, the 10th one doesn't want money they want to know why it failed.
It trickles along untill the media needs a story cause it's a slow news day, they find it and blow it out of perportion, suddenly you have 50 other people showing up claiming they got hurt by your computer (even though they never owned one or they own a different company's but hey, that's technicalitys), you get a big class action lawsuit against you now. Suddenly those little settlements become one big settlement for everyone who has your computer.
Then you have to get someone to do the corral the negative PR that is happening against your company, so you only had 10 reported cases of a machine blowing up, one just wanted to know why it wasn't thought of somewheres before hitting retail and 59 (not doing actual numbers because it would be in the thousands, cause where there is money to be made by doing nothing, people will show up and want a peice of that pie) others want money from your company and you are now out of a job.
Sure this is just one computer but now the questions will slowly start happening,
First step: Deny Deny Deny, Your company did nothing wrong.
Second Step: Claim it was the users fault, They weren't using the proper power supply/battery for the notebook, it's not the companies fault.
Third Step: Claim it's a small problem, Your company is presented with proof it was their fault it happened so now it's time to claim that it's a small isolated problem and out of the millions you have sold worldwide there is only the one.
Fourth step: People see the chance to make money, Now you have people coming out claiming it happened to them and naturally they have no proof cause they got rid of the notebook since it "Blew up and no longer worked!" and then a lawyer sees a chance to make a name for him/herself and make some nice change from it. Time to issue a recall on all of them regardless.
Atleast that's how it works in the USA, not sure if other people are quick to think "10 problems around the world = EVERYTHING done by this company is flawed so I should get paid for not even being a part of it!".