Slashdot Mirror
Dell Laptop Burns House Down
Nuclear Elephant writes "The Consumerist is running a story about a house burned down by a Dell laptop. 'My 130-year-old former farm house was engulfed in flames, with thick dark smoke pouring out of the windows and roof... Hours later, after investigation the fire marshal investigator took me aside asked me if I had a laptop computer. Yes — I told him I had a Dell Inspiron 1200.' It was determined that the laptop, battery, or cord malfunctioned after its owner left for work, leaving the fire to spread through the entire house. All attempts to contact Dell have failed. 'I have tried to call Dell to at least notify them of my problems, but each time I have called I get transferred into an endless loop of "Joe" or "Alan" all speaking a delectable version of English I presume emanates from Bangalore. I have been outright hung up on each time I get someone who speaks a reasonable version of English, or sounds like they might be in charge of something. Promises of call backs have gone, of course, unreturned.'"
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the submitter of this Slashdot article isn't the narrator of the original. You're not talking to anyone, and your helpful advice has no audience.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
This is Slashdot, where even the well known fact that Windows is Cheaper, Faster, and more Reliable than Linux or Macintosh is ignored; Just like the fact that large amounts of WMD's were in Iraq, and Global Warming isn't real.
It's his fault for leaving it plugged in to the mains while he was not present. Or does common safety not apply in the US ? How do we know that the power cord wasn't damaged or some other self inflicted problem ? How many 5A devices were plugged into the same 10A rated adapter+4 way extension ?
so if this is redundant, mark it so and fuck off!
"Dude! You bought a Dell!"
This is funny because I have a client who just Friday had yet ANOTHER Dell power supply blow out - the third one in the last couple months out of his 22 machines (none of the machines are more than three or four years old). He went out and bought a replacement power supply as he did before.
I was aware that Dell power supplies tend to be non-standard (or have been, depending on the year and model). But I thought that had to do with case layout only (and it does affect case layout - standard power supplies on some Dells will not have the power connector accessible without cutting a slot on the case.) So I checked and discovered that I was unaware that Dell power supplies in many cases were not merely non-standard in layout, but have different pinouts. Meaning that if you put a standard power supply in such a Dell, you will FRY YOUR MOTHERBOARD! Dell has NO warnings on the case about this!
I double-checked the model number on the client's system inventory I took, and determined that it is Dell 8300, which is one that DOES take a standard ATX power supply. However, had it been the 8400 machine NEXT to the 8300 machine, it would NOT.
"Dude! You bought a Dell!"
Anybody who buys a Dell, an HP, a Gateway, or any other "consumer grade" machine from a large corporation for corporate use is going to get bit down the road by that purchase. Quite frankly, home users shouldn't even buy that crap.
PCs are COMMODITIES. Buy them that way. Buy a white box from a storefront run by some Chinese guys. You'll get standard parts, an installable OS CD, and no crap on the desktop.
(Aside: My client just replaced his own desktop Dell with a white box PC. We spent several days trying to figure out how to get his hard drive moved to the new PC while still allowing him to run his existing Windows XP, before dropping the idea and just putting a new XP on the new box. Since he had no Dell reinstall CD - since the original box came with Windows 2000, Dell had no reinstall XP hat he could use - and since trying a Sysprep move would have been risky, and since the old XP was screwing up anyway, we decided to just install a new XP and reinstall his apps.)
(Further aside: That's when I discovered QuickBooks Premiere requires him to run as Administrator ALL THE TIME! Nice move, Intuit, YOU MORONS! He went ahead and installed it on the default admin account before I could warn him to create a NEW Admin account, so now we're hosed security-wise. And I can't even put my own account on the box now to enable remote monitoring because if I do, it will send the original admin account to Safe Mode access only, and QuickBooks is totally tied to that default admin account. Nice work, Bill, YOU MORON!)
(Final aside: Just think about it, folks! The accounting software that practically every small business and small business accounting firm uses to keep track of your books, your transactions, and your credit card numbers is that one software that runs on Windows in ADMINISTRATOR MODE AT ALL TIMES! Tell me again about "security is job one".)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!