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Alan Cox's Exploding Laptop
Bowie J. Poag writes to mention a page put up to commemorate the explosion of Alan Cox's laptop. From the article: "Alan was on the other side of the room from the laptop. I was elsewhere. He yelled out, I ambled towards the room in my own good time, and then I heard 'Fire! Real fire! Call the fire brigade, now!' and I speeded up a bit. From Alan subsequently, I gather there was an explosion and flying pieces of laptop, and a fireball, and a couple of fires started where (presumably) boiling battery landed, and one fragment smashed an LCD monitor. And then there was smoke and smell (there is still smell) and smoke alarm wailing and firemen and sirens and paramedics (happily unneeded) and police and a man with a notebook asking questions for the fire report.'"
Or perhaps he should have bought his battery in shrinkwrap from a reputable dealer rather than getting an after-market battery off of eBay? Even if it's a "genuine" IBM, for all he knows he ended up with a recall unit that somehow (*cough*) got resold on the open market.
There are some things you DO NOT trust after-market vendors for. One of those things happens to be a highly explosive Lithium Ion battery pack. There are enough problems with the first party units to give pause to anyone even considering third party units. Getting off of eBay? Now that's just asking for trouble.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
With the current trend in battery explosions for laptops, I wonder how long until all laptops are considered explosive devices and aren't allowed to be used on planes. Perhaps we should start using things that are more stable. Like radioactive material or internal combustion engines. Ooh! Or we could all get neat little hand cranks!
What am I going to do on my flight to Germany now?
The problem is that the "reputable dealers" have ridiculous markups on replacement parts. You can get a digital camera battery for $40 or for $4. For most people the $4 batteries work just the same and don't fail. Actually I am under the impression that more name brand batteries have been the cause of laptop fires than others, perhaps because they are supposed to be the best performing batteries, so they have to cut more corners than generics. One thing which could really help the situation is standardization: It would bring prices down by enabling competition and reducing the number of different battery packs a manufacturer needs to support. That would pretty much eliminate the need or desire to buy off-brand batteries.
No, Alanis, it would be a coincidence. It would be ironic if he was working on a battery status monitoring program when it exploded.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"