his son's burning laptop comupter.
Dave Brown
There is a fairly good video report on the station's website.
Note, the one that caught fire appears to be an older model G4 iBook
Posted on 05/24/2006 1:20:24 AM PDT by Swordmaker
(CBS 11 News) DALLAS CBS 11 has uncovered a danger with laptop computers that the manufacturers may not want you to know. There are dozens of reports nationwide of laptops erupting into flames. CBS 11 has the pictures, research and recalls to prove it. And despite all that, the major computer manufacturers would not comment.
Nick Brown is an 11-year-old who was playing on his Apple iBook about one month ago when, like most children, he got distracted and left the room.
His mom, Cindy Brown, explains what happened next. “My husband and I were in the other room, heard a popping noise, came out and the room was filled with smoke." Heat from Nick’s laptop computer, which was lying on the floor, had started melting the carpet. The Browns quickly carried it outside.
Dave Brown grabbed his camera. The pictures show flames shooting from the lower right hand corner of the laptop. The area around the lower right side is blackened immediately. More and more pictures show the laptop continuing to burn, eventually causing large flames to shoot out of it. Eventually, the laptop is melted to the Browns’ patio. “I mean it was five minutes and it (the computer) was in flames. The computer burst into flames. It doesn't seem real that you would have a fire a in a computer. We all could have died and the house could have burned down,“ says Cindy Brown.
And the latter part of Brown’s concern has happened.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the fire that burned a two-story apartment complex in Mississippi in November 2005 was caused by a laptop.
In 2004, the Commission received a report of a laptop fire in a kindergarten room in Houston. The same year a laptop fire severely burned a woman in her dorm in New York. Reports show a hotel bed ignited and caused a room to catch fire in Warren, Michigan in November 2005. In March, a laptop in a laboratory caught fire and burned the desk where it was located in Ames, Iowa. These incidents are among the 43-reported incidents in the last two years.
Nick Brown’s computer makes 44.
Staring at his computer and shaking his head, Nick says, “I don’t know why it caught fire.”
In 2004 and 2005, Apple, Dell, and Hewlett Packard collectively recalled more than 300-thousand laptop batteries “due to fire hazards.”
Security Consultant Scott Rynd says, “The vast influx of these devices into the home and into the office creates the opportunity for a very large problem.”
Rynd is one many industry insiders who have told CBS 11 News that the problem focuses on lithium ion batteries.
As computers get smaller…so do the lithium ion batteries. Rynd says the batteries are getting over packed with power and overheating.
He and others insiders say the demand for laptops is also increasing as the prices go down, so the big computer companies are now buying batteries overseas in places like China.
As the American computer makers are left to recall the imported batteries, two questions remain.
One: are they acting quickly enough? Rynd says, “They (computer companies) are not actively covering up the issues. They are not taking out full page ads in the New York times to publicize the problem.”
And two:are the computer makers recalling enough?
The battery in the Brown’s computer is not on Apple’s recall list--at least, not yet.
“This could happen again to someone else. Had we not been in the room, our house would have started on fire. I mean we could have been asleep…it's just very frightening to think what could have happened, “says Cindy Brown.
The Browns case is now under investigation by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. For more information on the serial numbers of the current batteries recalled, you can log onto the links to the right of this story.
Dell and Apple gave us a “no comment” for this story. Hewlett Packard never returned our calls.
Patti Davis, a spokesperson with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, says the agency is following the situation. Davis says there have been a lot of recalls. She says the lithium ion batteries do have a lot of energy and can potentially cause injury. The agency recommends paying close attention to computer company manuals.
Some of the insiders CBS 11 news talked to say the manuals do not go far enough in warning consumers.
Here’s some advice:
And, remember, computers are not the only devices that use lithium ion batteries. Several other small portable devices, such as cell phones, also use the technology and they too have been part of recalls due to fire hazards. For more information on those recalls, you can log onto the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Website.
CBS 11 News learned about this story because Nick Brown is the nephew of CBS 11 News Investigative Reporter Ginger Allen.
There is a fairly good video report on the station's website.
Note, the one that caught fire appears to be an older model G4 iBook
NOT FUD PING! Apple reported fewer than 10 laptop fires from all versions of their line... but recalled 28,000 batteries not too long ago. Dell recalled 280,000 and HP a similar number also for "Fire hazard" reasons after several caught fire. The Consumer Product Commission reports 43 (not counting the one in the picture above) laptop battery fires.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
My understanding is that any rechargeable battery system can combust.
Not stopping me from using my PowerBook. Besides which, faulty batteries probably give indications that they're not good.
Burn different.
buy a mac, burn down your house...
I always operate my Powerbook on a hard, flat surface. If I'm in front of the TV, I have a piece of plywood I put on my lap to make sure the bottom of the 'puter has some air running under it. I would do that with any "laptop" (which I prefer to call "portable").
OTOH, maybe he just posted an unpopular message and got flamed.
"It doesn't seem real that you would have a fire a in a computer."
Ok...what's wrong with this picture?
How could someone be dumb enough to do this and not expect some sort of malfunction?
Should I make some kind of comment about the common sense level of some Apple owners? Nah.
I s'pose there are enough idiots to fill both camps.
Buy an HP, burn down your house...
Buy a Dell, burn down your house...
:'D A burning laptop for the Rest of Us.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/trivia
"The futuristic computer that Roy Scheider is using on the beach planning for the mission is an Apple IIc with an LCD screen. The Apple IIc was a full-strength Apple computer with 128k of memory, two serial ports and a mouse in an 11in by 12in box small enough to fit in a briefcase. Impressive stuff at the time."
One of my clients has one of those Gateway laptops that looks like a PowerBook G4. Well, had - it burst into flame last week.
...some hybrid cars.
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