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."

Comments

I understand Ford made that comp re Pinto tanks

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the laptops and no-one gets hurt.

If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall.

(If you were really working for Dell, and believed in that computation, you wouldn't make that post, even anonymously.)

As I heard it, Ford once made that computation with Pinto gas tanks (the ones that would dump a few inches of gas into the passenger compartment if a Pinto with a full tank was rear-ended.)

Several accidents resulted in "Severe Passenger Damage".

This came out in the tiral. So did the cost of the recall. The court awarded the plantifs the cost of the recall as puntative damages.

It was making the point that the computation you described doesn't excuse deliberately, and without warning, failing to fix a design defect that creates a significant danger to the life and health of the customers. And it was making it in a way that even a psychopath can understand. It was saying "Whatever you saved by chosing to not fix such a major defect, frying a customer WILL cost you more."

This is ONE of the things those massive judgements are about, and what "tort reform" is intended to eliminate. (Another is that they might sound high - but they must be large enough to provide a lump sum whose interest is enough to pay the living and medical expenses of a maimed person for the rest of his/her life, or replace his/her contribution to the support of family, especially dependents, if he/she died.)