Dell laptop explodes

the Inquirer ^ | 21 June 2006 | Inquirer staff

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

Perhaps. Putting a laptop on what appears to be some type of fabric or plastic table cloth wouldn't help with heat dissipation either.

The cause of the the fire was definitely the batteries. The 'multiple pops' are the give-away. Lithium batteries are also sensative to heat, so it's possible that when they over-heated, they went into thermal runaway.

[zeugma]

Cooling pads are a no-brainer IMO. My laptops run much cooler with them.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

*gulp* My sister has just bought a Dell laptop... uh-oh, I'm sitting at a Dell desktop... I hope desktops aren't affected...

[JamesP81]

You know a source of laptop parts?? A case and power supply would be good.

Ebay.

[bwteim]

Thanks, I will file that under the many things I didn't know. I assume majority of laptop batteries are lithium?

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

I assume majority of laptop batteries are lithium?

These days, that would be a correct assumption.

Not just laptops, but cell phones, pagers, etc.

If the battery is flat and wide, it's a lithium. If it's round, it'll say what chemistry the battery uses. (dry cell, alkaline, nicad, nimh, lithium, etc.)

All round lithium cells incorporate the protective circuitry, so they're pretty safe.

Some flat lithium cells do, some don't. Sometimes the manufacturer will incorporate the protective circuitry into the charger. So, it's the flat cells you have to watch out for.

The absolute worse thing to do is to use a non-lithium charger on lithium cells. Neither the voltages nor the current (amps) will match.

As I wrote above, unlike all other battery technology, lithiums are sensative to both voltage and current (amp) errors. If you use a charger with voltage too high, or if the charging current exceeds 1C/cell (single-cell capacity), or if you overdischarge the cell, expect a puffed pack, followed shortly by a toxic, corrosive white cloud, followed shortly by an intense, spitting flame.

[Viking2002]

Back in '02 or '03, I had an end user bring me a Dell D600 with a little hardware 'problem' to repair. It, too, had a thermal *ahem* 'event', and the power adapter plug had gotten so hot, the plug literally fused itself into the adapter jack on the back of the notebook. There was no separating the adapter cord, motherboard, or case plastics. How in the hell that happened but could still power up on AC afterwards was a one-in-a-million shot, but it did. As a Dell tech, I get the occasional service recalls snail-mailed to me. And I've run into widespread power problems with their many of their models. The GX260 towers have bad power supplies inside. The GX 270 SFF desktops blow entire banks of capacitors. I had one that I repaired about six months ago, and it got so hot inside, the memory stick was actually warped. The only reason it didn't go up in flames was because it had sucked so much dirt inside, there probably wasn't enough oxygen circulating to allow ignition. LMAO *POOF!* OK, that particular one wasn't (entirely) Dell's fault, but yes, Dells are more well-known in tech circles for this type of thing than the public is aware of. Somebody's gonna get hurt bad one of these days.

[Bigg Red]

Oh, heck! I was hoping it was some esoteric new techie slang that I could learn and then impress my eldest son, who is an IT guy.

Yes, I have gotten the porn offers in the past but not lately. I have never seen "pr0n" in the subject line, however. Unfortunately, I do get lots and lots of the "male enhancement" junk, though, promising in the subject line what I can do to or with or for "her". What makes it even more ridiculous is that I am a happily married woman! :-)

[Swordmaker]

How about an Apple laptop?

Before an anti-Mac fanatic answers I will. Apple's laptops are not immune from this exploding battery either. An Apple iBook G4 burst into flame after being left on by an 11 year old boy a couple of months ago.

He did leave it sitting on a shag rug on the floor which may have impeded the cooling airflow, but it did indeed burst into flames.

Also the initial production run of Mac 5300 laptops was prone to overheating and some of them got hot enough to warp the plastic case. The problems were traced to a Korean battery manufacturer. 28,000 Mac laptops were recalled for battery replacement. At the same time, 129,000 HP laptops were recalled because of battery overheating... the batteries were manufactured by the same Korean company that was cutting corners on specs.

[bwteim]

Thanks, Dan, for that answer.






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[martin_fierro]

From the Unfortunate Marketing Files:

Dell Renegade:

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

You're welcome.

[MoochPooch]

Maybe he was looking up hotbabe.com.

(GROAN)