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Dell Laptops Still Exploding
bl8n8r writes "It 'looked like fireworks, which would have been cool had it not been in my house.' said Doug Brown of Columbus, Ohio. Brown, a Network Administrator, called 911 last week when the Dell 9200 laptop burst into flames in his house. Emergency response units included two pumpers, a ladder truck, a bamalance, the HAZMAT unit, and a battalion chief. When Doug phoned Dell to inquire about liability, he was asked if he had insurance. It's not clear if Doug's laptop is one of the earlier models recalled by Dell; a Macbook is cited in the article for allegedly burning down a house in Australia as well as another instance of a suspect Dell laptop burning out a pickup truck in Nevada. If the burning battery issues are going to continue to be a problem, who's going to be responsible for losses? Insurance companies, Laptop makers, Battery vendors, and consumer negligence could presumably be cited in all cases."
...what MacBook model went up in flames? (He types from his MacBook.)
Sugapablo
This is what insurance is for though - the unexpected. Surely general household cover would be sufficient? As a matter of interest is it common to bill the houseowner for the fire departments response?
if my dell explodes on a plane, is that a suicide bombing? I'm assuming that I'd be dead, of course.
It was bucking bental.
A) What is a bamalance?
2) This is Columbus, GA not Columbus, OH.
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
I want a ride in an bamalance, myself, I'll happily have my laptop explode to get a ride.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's obvious the user here was overclocking his laptop.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
insurance not the issue, liability is. anyway, silly of guy to call Dell and ask. You get a lawyer and you sue their incompetent labtop-firebomb building asses.
Batteries (you know, those little packages of reactive chemicals?) have been bursting into flames ever since they were invented.
In TFA it cites a couple of modern examples. How many laptop batteries are out there?
Hardly a plague of battery burnin's.
Reminds me of SARS -- you remember, that disease that killed a couple hundred people in 2003 -- which basically shut down Asia for 6 months. Everyone suddenly forgot that the regular old "flu" kills 100,000 people every single year.
If we're gonna panic about "things that cause fatal fires" I'd be stomping on cigarette manufacturers before I went after the company that didn't even make the battery that caught on fire.
Cue 200+ comments to the tune of "I used to trust Dell but now..."
Can we get a new tune up in here?
seriously, it looks like they are more of a proven hazard than water
I just ordered a Dell Vostro 1500. My previous notebook was also a Dell and I was mailed a new battery as a part of a recall. I was under the impression that the problem had been addressed but now I'm concerned that I might have to wear a bomb proof suit while reading Slashdot from the comfort of my patio ;)
... a 'Bamalance is a pickup truck, a 3 x 6 foot piece of plywood, two EMT's named Jethro, and a bottle of moonshine for antiseptic AND anaesthetic.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I have a Dell Latitude D810 and when I'm playing Warcraft if I don't limit the CPU speed to 1.6Ghz or lower the CPU temp climbs to 190F (according to gnome's CPU temp monitor).
I think this is a combination of the heat produced by the CPU and the ATI GPU, cause it doesn't get so hot when I'm not doing 3D graphics.
The nice thing is, WoW runs pretty well at very low CPU speeds. As long as I'm not trying to run around Shattrath I can limit it to 1.06Ghz with no problems.
(ATI x600 GPU and a 2.13Ghz Pentium M CPU)
It's all about the Sony batteries. It's misleading to say "Dell" or "Macbook." They (and many other makers) are using Sony batteries.
Thank God no one actually had them on their lap.
A client of mine asked me to fix his Dell laptop, which was overheating and shutting down to fix the problem. This was before the exploding batteries were in the news.
First of all DO NOT turn off the automatic shut down of the laptop when the processor reaches a certain temperature to fix this problem.
Deleting enough off the drive to defragment it fixed the issue and it stopped overheating. First I had to put the laptop on a metal barbeque frame so it would be cool enough and stay on long enough to defragment it.
Kind of a scary task for your boss to give you now that I think about it... but this was months before it was on the news. I don't know if this is the same issue exactly but I wanted to bring it up.
If you have fire insurance (homeowner's or renter's) then they should cover the laptop and any damage to your house or other belongings, subject to the deductible. The insurance company may go after (subrogate) Dell.
Most companies play hardball and tell you to get lost, the only thing you can do is sue them, and then they will complain about people suing them. As they say, shit happens, but if it turns out the manufacturer knew, or reasonably should have known, that the batteries pose an undue hazard, they may be held liable in court. In the USA, there is basicly no more consumer protection so you are on your own. Some other countries (and a few states) will hold the manufacturer's toes to the fire (so to speak) so they may act a little more responsibly.
IANAL and all that craziness.
Consumer negligence? How is the consumer negligent if these guys keep manufacturing batteries that go supernova? I own a low-end HP laptop, and it can get incredibly hot as well. It now has to be sent in for servicing, I suspect that the temperature eventually fried the board. It's under warranty for another couple of months, but I have to fork out over $200 for a year's extended warranty on it. For those kinds of prices, I ought to be leasing them. The growing popularity of laptops have made the manufacturers lazy. They're cutting corners, producing substandard products that are not only more prone to failure, but may very well be dangerous. They'll argue "We're trying to keep the prices down", but that's the same argument Mattel uses for using substandard Chinese factories to produce toys that can potentially poison millions of children. Frankly, I think the time has come to seriously bone-up consumer protection laws. Massive fines, the industry paying for government inspections, and the like. Manufacturers have proven incapable or unwilling to adequately protect the consumer, and we should start nailing their bottom lines severely, so that the fucking shareholders, who seem eager to profit from the crap their companies produce, aren't feeling more directly the pain. Fining Dell or Apple a few hundred million dollars the first time, and then quadruple the second time, will probably raise the price of laptops, but at least we won't be sent out overheating crap.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Actually the enclosures were designed to specifically take the heat away from the components to a [metal] frame that had a larger surface area. It felt hotter to the user but kept the components inside cooler than a plastic case would have.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
all the flameout issues are with lithium ion batteries.
it may just be that we can't manufacture these things more than one at a time with the care required to keep all that energy density safely in the case.
it happened to Edison, too... only I think it was something like an iron/sulfur battery they couldn't make more than one of.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This happened in Columbus, GA. Not Ohio.
Just because Dell didn't make the battery, doesn't mean they're not liable. Dell sold him a complete unit, which came with the battery in question (assuming he wasn't using a replacement battery, DNRFTA). Continuing the bad car analogies that roam the savage wastelands of Slashdot: if you bought a used car, under warranty, from a dealer, and a part broke that just happened to be a third-party part (happens often on used cars), would you be ok with the dealer telling you you're SOL? Yeah, I didn't think so.
Someday a laptop is going to take a plane out. I hope I am not on it when it happens.
That's gotta be the funniest news title I've seen in a while... Dell Laptops Still Exploding.... hahahaha - that made my day :-P
Moon Crater, Afghanistan - Izur Abdul Bagdahallahabada carefully plugs in his newest incendiary device; a Dell 9200 laptop.
"By the will of Allah, the infidels have provided the means of their own destruction." Bagdahallahabada says. "We must be careful, of course, that it does not burn down our own houses." he cautions. "My brother, may Allah give him dozens of greased up virgins in heaven, was using a Macbook, and it sent him, his son and a funny little fellow with half a nose flying."
All over Afghanistan, crappy Dell laptops are being found, replacing chemical explosives and home-made gas bombs as the prime way to kill NATO forces. And it's getting worse, as this new, all-too-frightening technology is exported abroad. Just last week, three Iraqi politicians had their penises fried off when their Dell's overheated.
"We like to install WoW on them." Bagdahallahabada explains. "We give it the infidel soldiers, who play these gay, decadent fantasy characters. We wait in the bushes, and kaboom!"
NATO's current head of Afghan operations, Major General Sir Wilfred Ruck-sticks-oxbatten has seen it all too often. "We were enjoying a little porn at my command post, and the Mac laptop just exploded, sending shrapnel in all directions and burning off my bleedin' moustache. The chaps back in Edinborough claim they saw spikes on their seismometers.
Indeed, exploding Dell laptops are causing another problem. The countless number of explosions are making tracking earthquakes nearly impossible. "We had a tech convention in San Francisco last week." said Dr. Bob Underwear, USGS scientist. "Christ, we thought the whole San Andreas fault was making a bee-line for Anchorage. One of my colleagues actually shit his pants, all because seventeen Dells tried to render a 3d graph in realtime."
What the ultimate solution cannot be told. But Mr. Bagdahallahabada clearly feels there's no rush. "When all the world converts to Islam, then we'll make sure they buy HP."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Bama Lance looks too young to be an emergency responder. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=us er.viewprofile&friendid=22573117
Please take a look at this link: http://apcmag.com/3912/qantas_ban_may_extend_to_ma c_laptops
This seems to be even more of a pointed issue considering the number of MacBooks that may still have problems with waking up from sleep when the MacBook is still closed.
I don't know how many people that have MacBooks still have this issue, but I really suspect that I'm not the only one. I've got an earlier MacBook, but bought it form an Apple Store in August of last year, so its really not one of the 1st ones off the assembly line.
Periodically, the MB will wake up and stay on while closed and in say, my bag or out on the desk, etc. etc. - enough that, based on battery drain, its got to be awake at least 1/2 the time that the MB is closed. Needless to say, this makes the MB (and everything around it) hot. I can easily see how if the MB is in a backpack or other carrying device, it could easily overheat - and thus make any battery fire issues that much more likely.
Issues like this one - and inadequate airflow, heat dissipation issues - etc. aren't just nuisances or cosmetic given these battery issues.
Tim
The batteries were marked with the CE and UL logos right? These leeches on society should pay.
could these batteries be used as a weapon in Iraq?
The insurance company lawyers are also likely to be a lot more experienced at this type of liability litigation than any you can find unless you can turn it into a class-action suit.
Ok, there's something wrong with this picture. Here the guy's laptop is on fire, in the middle of his floor. He calls in 2 fire trucks, a HAZMAT team, and I forget what else. Now he said in TFA that the 911 guys overreacted, but still. Why on EARTH would he not just put it out himself, rather than calling 911? Heck, even if he didn't have an extinguisher... you beat it out with a blanket, or something. I guarantee that's less damage than the firemen will do to your house...
...and we were instructed during training to *never* refer to them as Laptops, only as Notebooks, for just that issue: Toshibas tend to run hot, and the result is anything from a sweaty leg to threats of legal actions due to near-burns.
Does anyone know of a laptop that is safe to use on the lap? I think I may have posted an 'ask slashdot' some time ago asking for opinions on laptops that operate suitably cool. Back in the day I used a Compaq 6400, but the screen broke. What I'm after is something that operates relatively cold, has a good battery life, and doesn't make much noise. This would make an ideal travel companion (for when I finally get my passport that is). I'm not that bothered about how much RAM/HDD/MHz, just enough to run OOo/gvim/perl/ff2 etc.
Why UNIX?
as long as long as you can control it, and as long as it has a cool sounding countdown.
Really, is it that hard to carry an additional one pound and have a safer and probably better battery in a laptop? Has society gotten that wimpy? The great race to see who can have the thinnest lightest laptop causes problems like this, along with cost cutting in quality and emphasis on bling factor. It needs to stop, maybe a few multi million dollar lawsuits might help, who knows, but there has to be something to get their attention on this generation's "pinto".. Lithium ion batts are cool tech, but they apparently need a lot more work on the stability issues and it would help if engineering dictated the size and weight and config, not marketing.
Personally, I like explosions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When did we sign the social contract that nothing we use can have a negative impact without a payout? If I'm going to have a power source that can run a full computer for several hours I'm going to have to accept that that amount of power may get out of hand. If I have a blade sharp enough to cut a steak I have to accept that it is sharp enough to cut me.
Please, all of us, understand there are physical limitations to things and they are sometimes dangerous, and sometimes you just have to take the risk implicitly. If 6 batteries in the world caught fire that makes them about as safe as anything I've ever heard with that much power. They should be recalled if there is a reasonable expectation we can do better but I think you need to accept certain things are what they are. Fire cooks, fire kills. Chemicals react to make electricity, chemicals react period.
I can find several sources to support this definition (I was very curious):
From the only bamalance worker I can find Dade is most likely Florida, which means this could be a southeastern thing. Also used here, from a man claiming to be 'GA Man'
Charles
doublerebel.com
If I had a sig, this is where it would be.
...you're getting a desktop.
(as a replacement)
Right?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/03/airl ines_batteries.html
Federal reports indicate at least nine fires involving lithium batteries have happened on airplanes or in cargo destined for planes since 2005.
Oh, well...
For over a month I tried to get a replacement for my D820 - which isn't on the recall list.
They told me 3 times it would go out overnight but didn't. Finally, I had a "manager" on the customer service chat swear she would get it resolved and it would ship overnight. HOWEVER, when I tried to pin her down to when it would SHIP, she wouldn't give a date at all and claimed it could take up to 8 days to get it "in the system".
08/25/2007 03:38:40PM Agent (Khushboo Sharma): "The replacement order will be sent to you overnight."
08/25/2007 03:38:54PM (me): "when will it be shipped?"
08/25/2007 03:38:56PM Agent (Khushboo Sharma): "However, it will take some to get the new order number generated and get it shipped out of Dell."
08/25/2007 03:39:08PM (me): "I need you to say, clearly, that it wil be shipped on MONDAY and will be shipped OVERNIGHT."
08/25/2007 03:39:35PM (me): "I am not a moron. I have been duped before. Not again."
08/25/2007 03:40:44PM Agent (Khushboo Sharma): "I can not assure you that it will ship on Monday."
--- and it went on and on.... Finally I made them refund the money on the order, and I order the replacement from someone else who actually had them.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Burma?
Apparently Laptop Batteries are the new Thermite or now made of thermite...
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
When someone asks if you have insurance, you say YES! Then go to your renter's/home insurance agent and give them the FULL story. If they behave anything like the auto insurance industry, they will use all their legal muscle to recover costs.
Imagine a headline saying "Dell sued for exploding battery insurance company payments" for all those users who called their insurance companies.
With the public demanding longer and longer use times for laptops, the LiOn battery makers are going to try and squeeze more and more into a given space to meet the demand. With the tolerances for errors in battery design shrinking, it doesn't take much to set a battery pack off. Here's an idea. With every new laptop, give them a coupon for a free fire proof safe! Instead of the safe protecting the documents inside the safe, the safe will protect your HOUSE from the battery stored inside the safe. LOL.
Relax, an exploding laptop is one of the new FEATURES we have built into every DELL we ship
Give me a break, this kinda stuff never ha--!@#$!@ & #####
[NO CARRIER]
The mortality rate for flu is around 0.1%. For SARS it was close to 20%. Personally I'd think that was reason enough to panic. You must be really brave. How many times have you had the flu? Care to try out SARS for a change?
This thread is already 5th on Google, 4th if you count the Slashtags link!
n G=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bamalance&bt
How much for bamalance as an Adword??
And, ever-helpful --
Did you mean: bambalance
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Was the guy making more out of this than he claims? The fire department thinks so.
Quick, take them to the poshital in a bamalance!
+++ATH0
sigs are hazardous to your health
Better yet, file a claim with the insurance company and let THEM sue Dell to recoup their costs!
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Anyone else notice that the story has now changed to a "Columbus, Georgia" man... yet the links on the linked news article still show "Columbus, Ohio"... Didn't they cover this problem in the movie Tommy Boy?
According to the headline article, it must be Dell's fault. Which is kind of strange, since he even mentions Apple laptops asploding.
But of course Slashdot isn't going to say anything negative about their favorite monopoly.
and when the Iranian Republican Guard starts supplying Dell laptops to the Iraqi insurgents, then by Gawd, it's time to regime change Iran!
> units included two pumpers, a ladder truck, a bamalance, the HAZMAT unit, and a battalion chief
Sounds like Paris Hilton's last Saturday night...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Flamebait? I think Slashdot should pass rule forbidding those who don't recognize satire not get mod points, or karma. How does it feel to be a mental retard and a moderator?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.