Dude, your Dell just freaking blew up!!!

As I sit here typing I'm reminded of what happened at roughly 4 p.m. Central Standard time at my office (about an hour ago); especially since my hands still smell like 'fire extinguisher'. While specifying instrumentation tag names on a flow drawing my attention is turned towards the haze building up on the other side of the engineering area. I started hearing some distant prattle about “fire”, “hmmm... what could this possibly be?” I think to myself. Upon further investigation I've come to the conclusion that someone's Dell laptop just freakin blew up and started a cozy little desktop fire!!!

Since I’m not in the mood for S’mores... "Oh, this is priceless" I think to myself; as I turn straight back to my desk where, from within my back-pack, I whip out my 7.2MP digital camera.

One of our IT guys put out the flames (yes, I said flames) and thusly covered the entire area with fire extinguisher ‘material’. The battery burned its way straight through the laptop creating the beautiful hole with which is so beautifully depicted in the picture. The fire department showed up. The police department showed up. The entire lower floor was allowed to leave early and as we stood there in front of the building we simply couldn’t resist... we jokingly called the engineer a terrorist as he was being asked a few questions by the friendly officer.

The most priceless moment of this entire ordeal is something that I, with regret, do not have a picture of. While taking pictures through the haze (after everyone had evacuated the area and before the fire department came to kick us out), the engineer who’s laptop it was had been spotted out of the corner of my eye. Apparently he heard there was a fire and that we all had to go outside. Being the noble engineer that he is, he quickly wanted to grab his laptop!!! HAHAHA The look on his face, as he stretched out his arms in disbelief was priceless!!! Again, I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of that... I was laughing too damn hard! (I was only able to get a picture of him walking away, as I was intermittently laughing and coughing at the same time)

Here are a few pictures, please enjoy them as much as the Dell representatives and the AWESOME crew over at THG surely will when I send them the link.

Regards,
The Automation Engineer who had to go home early!




*edit* - This is what it did to the desk...


And my favorite (after having to pry the melted plastic apart to open it up):

That's awesome!!!

Not really, but you know what I mean

Sorry about the loss of equip though. Hopefully Dell will foot the bill...

GREAT STUFF!!

Thread of the Week. Someone sticky this.

hehe... I'm sure they will. Maybe someone from Dell will see this and make sure of it... LOL

haha... For those of you interested... here's a close-up of the battery. It was tossed into the recycling bin so quickly that it melted the side of the container...

This reminds me of an incident about a month ago when a Dell laptop burst into flames at a Japanese business conference. One of the people attending got some pictures of it. I wish I could remember the link to them.

I need to show this to the people I used to work for. I worked for a retail store and they would swear by dell(not the way we swear about dell). They thought dells were the greatest, but those of us that were required to sell them, hated them.

Heres the link to the japanese laptop fire.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/lap [...] 182257.php

You shouldn't have gotten the Turion X2.

Huh, are you sure you have the right thread. I'm not sure what the Turions have to do with this topic.

Guess its time for Dell to recall the batteries

And the thought prescott was bad but its cooler than that....

I wonder if it is a pure heat issue, or if there is some abnormal chemical reaction. Maybe the chemicals from the battery somehow reacts to the case material causing the fire.

It probably has something to do with the charging system.

You're probably right about that. It probably just overloads and sends way more power than it should until the battery can't take it anymore and explodes. Hopefully there wasn't anyone working too close to that dell and got hurt.

nice tbh.

i have a 1-2 year old dell laptop, a 9100 to be precise and so hopefully it is a recent problem and my battery is fine.

as to the cause, chargin problems could be it. perhaps instead of stopping once its full it just keeps on charging until it burns up. still, makes a cool story.( unless it were my comp of course)

Of course I naturally feel sorry for anyone that has to work close with a dell, even if it doesn't explode. Its even worse if they have to work on it too.

nah, dell can just sell these to the US military as anti armor weapons for the marines.... they'll be like : NOW not only does the dell resist to mimitary life! u can use it as a INCENDIARY BOMB, lomb them at your favorate tech ennemys ^^..

ROTFL !!! i'm glad i bought a mac, allthough i'd think twice before putting that computer on my privates again....

OMG!! A Dell laptop with an air intake!!
Now that's superb air cooling!!

Oh, it's a shame what happened to that desk... All covered in fire extinguisher dust.

Now, speaking seriously, WOW, and i mean, WOW. How can a laptop catch on fire just like that? This and the japanese episode, both laptops were Dell's. That doesn't say anything good about Dell laptops.

If one of these exploded while they were on someone's lap, dell would be so screwed. That person would get sooooo much money from dell in compensation.

With that huge hole you could loop something through and attach it to your belt. Now we're talking ultra mobile.