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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.'"
...for buying an IBM ThinkPad, notorious for their unreliability. Perhaps he should have considered an Apple or Dell instead.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
"What? Exploding laptop and you're running linux? Oh, we don't cover that."
Neither the MacBook or the iBook G4 have two latches on the screen, neither have audio jacks on the front, no apple notebook shipped with a 4 pin FireWire jack (on the front? are they serious??), etc.
.
Is that why there is a "Made for Windows XP" sticker on it?
Maybe somebody will build a laptop that doesn't require you to "take the battery out of the computer unless they need it." I have a UPS battery backup for my desktop system, and I don't have to pull the battery out of it when I'm not expecting to need to use the battery. That would defeat the whole point of having the thing. I think a lot of people are using their laptops like that, it's their main computer and they like the fact that it has a battery too so they can survive without it plugged in for an hour or two.
They handle fire- and smoke-damaged equipment all the time.
At the risk of being arrested and taken to a home for the criminally obvious, don't breathe any of the smoke from an exploding battery. Some formulations burn into chemicals that you don't want anywhere near you, such as hydrofluoric acid. It's not that strong an acid but it's remarkably destructive to flesh. If you do get a whiff of smoke go to the emergency room even if you feel OK.
Question: With all of the exploding batteries lately (Apple, Dell, Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo (possibly), etc. Have you seen any reports of Sony laptops exploding?
;)
Does Sony "cherry-pick" the A-grade batteries for their own use and send the B-grade and lower ones to their clients?
If so, what kind of liability issues does that raise. Sony HAS done some questionable things in the past knowingly.
Someday we'll all look back on this and plow into a parked car.
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?
Now where have I read that phrase before? *googles* oh yeah...
Dude, at least site the source of your data (and more complete information at that): wikipedia page for Alan Cox.
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We regret to inform you, Mr. Cox, that since you were operating with an unsupported software configuration (i.e. Linux) we can not offer you support in regards to your issue (spontaneous incendiary explosion). Thank you for purchasing an IBM thinkpad.
Sincerely,
IBM Tech Support
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Coming Soon Laptops On A Plane!
they aren't designed to be used on laps or any other surface
Drat. Now I'll have to go shopping for a surface-less table. Perhaps "Klein Bottles-R-Us" has what I need...
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
I am worried. 'real fire'? How virtual must your reality be to shout 'real fire'?
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Great! Sounds like Alan Cox has finally added support for the RJE and EOI opcodes to the Linux kernel.
Just about every single person living in the UK...
If a battery is defective and may explode, how long would it take ? For example, suppose you buy one replacement lithium battery nowadays; and you use it for X months; may you say "I have used it for X months, it did not explode, so it is not defective" ? Or, otherwise, is it a defect that may show up in a random moment in the future? Does anyone here at /. know?
Pretty much all of the UK. And since it appears that the UK started forming fire brigades just after the Great Fire Of London, that's probably where the name originates.
;)
Besides, 'Fire Department'? What's that? 'Department of Fire'? Hey, sounds like a fantastic place to work! Legal arson!
Yep. HF is straight up deadly. Eating away your flesh is the least of your worries when 3% covereage with .1M solution is enough to kill you in 48 hours. It's not a pleasant way to go, either.
I used to work with HF in my lab when I was a grad student. Let me tell you, you start to follow lab safety procedures REAL careful like.
Shouldn't all this exploding-laptop trend really lead to producing more durable cases for portable devices? Like, if a "laptop" really exploded like this while on someone's lap, the person could be seriously injured. If it [the laptop] had a harder casing, possibly made of titanium, the risk of injury would be much less.
-- Sig down
I think that would depend on which part would be made more durable. If you reinforced the entire casing then you might just make the explosion build up more pressure and potentially making it even more dangerous. It would probably be a good thing to reinforce the entire casing except the back so the explosion is aimed in the safest direction, like a shaped charge.
No, Alanis, it would be a coincidence. It would be ironic if he was working on a battery status monitoring program when it exploded.
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