Some people are blaming cheap batteries, but clearly there’s another cause:
Those exorcisms can get mighty violent.
It’s the kind of story the blogosphere loves: a Dell laptop explodes during a conference in Japan, and there’s even photo evidence. I trust that, as I write this, there are 1001 PR monkeys typing at 1001 Blackberries crafting the perfect response. Sadly, all they’ll come up with is the first act of Hamlet and a script for the new Jackie Chan flick.
Check out the attention this badboy is getting:
- 2451 diggs on, uh, digg
- 299 comments on Slashdot
- Front page of Techmeme
- The story’s 8 hours old, and it’s already got 90 incoming links on Technorati
And the mainstream media hasn’t even got its dirty clutches on the thing yet.
While I was editing that photo, something occurred to me about the other photo accompanying the article:
DarrenBarefoot.com 
1. Blogging about it?
2. Sending an IM to the local fire dept?
3. Removing traces of the “Dell Killer” virus from his machine?
4. Contacting Dell tech support?
🙂
He’s getting first post in on slashdot
He’s people on IRC all about the fire, hoping to get his comment listed on Bash.org.
Telling. He’s telling people on IRC all about the fire. Stupid fingers…
This has been happening with Dell notebooks for a long, long time. Do a search for “battery recall” on Google and look at which company comes up first.
This sounds corny, but I *do* know somebody who used to work for Dell Canada back in 1995 and it was apparently a problem then, and has been ever since. On average, every 2 years there seems to be a … ‘flare up’ (sorry, couldn’t resist).
Then again, what do you expect? Dell laptops are *cheap*. They had to be cutting corners somewhere…