Dude, your Dell is on fire
By Evan Blass 
posted Jun 22nd 2006 7:26PM
posted Jun 22nd 2006 7:26PM
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Excellent comments about Dell computers.
http://www.1-satellite-tv-facts.com
*reminds himself to bring a fire extinguisher with him when he carries his Dell Latitude around*
This laptop will self destruct in 3... 2... 1... :P
Dude, this is scary, imangine if this happend on a airplane? That would suck major ass. Dell really needs to look into this. Imangine the next person this happens to is using it on his lap? I smell 8 figures.
TOASTY~!
Dell is obviously in links with terrorist organizations to smuggle small weapons of moderate destruction.
Yet another reason not to purchase the fat, boring, cheap, and ugly computers Dell makes.
What an uninspiring brand.
That reminds me the Mission Impossible.
Maybe the guy accidentally pressed the self destruction button!!!
He, he, he !!!!
Maybe the Dell must add a fire extinguisher in every package... :).
@ #7
You also forgot to mention the crap parts they put into their systems.
That's hot.
Whoa...that is friggin' crazy!
sad... alienware pwns... even VAIOs are having problems now with their lt's...
dude...alienware is owned by dell....
dude...alienware is owned by dell....
There is actually 2 pictures of this and if you examine the images - it looks like these picture could be photoshop.
If you see the second picture, you notice that the flame is out side the notebook plus none of the notebooks looks damage. Also with such explosion, you expect that the notebook would be blasted on to the floor.
Reason # 645,789 not to buy a Dell. I wonder how well the tech support call went on that one?
@Atewart,
That's probably the most unconvincing debunking I've ever heard.
@Slacker,
Do you have any evidence of anything in the vicinity of a MB(P) melting? If so, share with the class.
@DT - Yes, that was a poor debunking. However his points are valid. The article quotes the submitter of the photos as saying the fire lasted at least five minutes. The two photos are clearly at different stages of this supposed fire, yet the scorch marks on the table are identical. Also, how likely is it that the table cloth survived with only the minor scorching pictured, with five minutes of flames and "multiple explosions?"
Also, look at the reactions of the bystanders, in the "explosion" photo. Yes, they are looking - but not with much concern evident. The gentleman on the right who is looking over his shoulder isn't even flinching away, yet he is clearly within feet of an "exploding" laptop.
I don't buy it. There may have been a fire, the scorch marks look fairly realistic. But the description & two photos (particularily the more dramatic one) do not fit together.
Almost like when that one iBook caught fire
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/06/01/ibook-battery-catches-fire/
Dudes, we got the whole story from the conference today -- it was using an aftermarket battery which exceeded the cell rating and overheated, plus the fan was broken so the computer was one big hot plate
i take it none of you have ever had a lithium ion battery rupture on you. if it gets too hot and it is a cheap battery, the battery will actually start to seperate. when lithium hits air, it produces what you see in the pictures there
not pretty, and very not fun.
any ideas what caused it?
Do we really know that it was Dell? And I'm not that big a fan, just that fair is fair.
Is it really a Dell? You can't tell from the picture so I guess only the people who were there could tell you for sure. I know the title says Dell but it also sounds much cooler than "Dude, your mac is on fire" so I was just wondering if the word Dell was used just because it makes a cool title for a burning computer.
@SIP YEK NOD
It'd fun to expose soft metals to oxygen in science class (ever dropped a wad of pure sodium in water?), but it's not so fun in your computer.
Reason number 34,627 you shouldn't overclock your laptop:-)
Not to make excuses for Dell (I got a Mac Book Pro....like I can talk about another laptop getting hot!)...but look at that green felt heat conducting tablecloth. How long was it sitting on that with no room for air? And after sitting in a laptop bag.....powered on for hours with no ventilation? Not saying that it's the owner's fault, but there are so many laptops that people don't treat them with care.
li-ion batteries tend to explode when their insides are exposed to air...
Is no one getting tired of the anti-Dell crap? Give it a rest people, Dells are the best value on the market for consumer PCs next to just buying the parts and building it yourself. Btw, Dell aquired Alienware a while back, they use the same policies in the hardware when building Alienwares as they do with building a Dell.
@Guruboy
Does that change the fact that Dells use proprietary parts and low wattage power supplies? Does that change their 4.36/10 resellerrating? No. Consumer Dells are NOT built to last.
If you are going to buy a laptop, dell is the way I would recomend you go, they have so many rebate offers you can get a great deal from them. I have yet to see a convincing arguement against them besides people just saying, "Dell Suxorz!!"
I believe this is real, I have seen several videos of over charged lithium batteries, its crazy. and if you ask me, those people are definately flinching away from the fire.
As for the scorch marks, I think that they would probably be caused by the initial explosion so they would stay the same in all of the pictures.
How on Earth can you possibly determine this was a Dell laptop? It almost looks like a PowerBook to me, but for the life of me, I can't tell for sure.
Anyone else notice the tangle of wires on the tables?
i have had my dell for 8 years no problems....yet.
I love they guy who said Alienware owns, Dell sucks.... wonder if he knows Dell bought them............
This could make the phrase "Dude you're getting a Dell" a threat of arson.
I think this is why the industry is calling these bad boys "notebook" computers now. Or maybe the battery was just defective.
And what about this happening on an airplane? At least planes are freezing cold and most people use the tray - but it seems like it could cause some problems - especially if it happens over mid-ocean. It would be a really uncomfortable hour, or two, before they could land the plane to fully air out the cabin.
(not like I actually know anything about how the ventilation system on an aircraft works)
Wow more American made technology bites the dust eh?
Awww, what a pity!!! HEHEHE.
Burn mofo! Burn. heha
It's a dell (TM)
The only possible explanation for this, if it is the laptop that caused that burst, is the chemicals in the battery.
Sorry, but nothing in your PC is explosive enough to create that kind of reaction... except the chemicals in an improperly manufactured battery.
Dell is most likely hardly to blame... this is something I'd expect from the $10 batteries on eBay. Chinese sweatshop manufacturing at it's finest.
What the heck, this looks like a conference room from circa 1973 I mean check the suited waiter on the left and the revolting zig zag wallpaper in the room. This has to be a wind up photoshop jobbie I'm tellin' ya! The fire is probably just someone's fondue set catching fire!!
Damn, can you people just not read!?
"it was using an aftermarket battery which exceeded the cell rating and overheated, plus the fan was broken so the computer was one big hot plate"
@Paul: Dammmit! Post right before yours! "...Dells use proprietary parts and low wattage power supplies...." And unless their acquisition of Alienware suddenly enabled their grunt workers able to put a computer together better under the same conditions and in the same facilities as before with the same parts as before...forget that train of thought: they're still shoddy pieces of workmanship, just like last week.
That actually happened to a friend of mine. Her brand new dell laptop caught fire and melted.
@ ted 7:59PM Jun 22nd: DELL AND MAC SUCKS GET A VAIO OR HP!
Damn! what a riot. you guys make me laugh out loud with your comments and i'm pretending to be quietly doing my work. Is this a Kodak Momentor what? i smell a crispy class action lawsuit.
While the whole incident is dangerous and i'm sure scare the bejesus of of anyone next to that thing there's not a direct hyperlink to the actual news article that indicates it's a Dell.
It could be a Mac with a defective battery pack. Although the Chinese love cheapos and statistics show 6-out-of-10-desktops and laptops sold in China are Dell so i guess it's a Dell our should i say a D'Hell.
Do people think a MacBook could do this as well? I'm planning on getting one, and don't want to phone up Apple saying my new laptop just exploded.
The gentlemen in the photo who don't seem to be reacting properly to the huge fire appear to be attempting to get the chairs away from the fire.
I don't believe it's real.
I'm surprised nobody's said it yet....:
The Dell from Hell
Okay honestly... the guy has time to take his keitai photo but the one guy doesn't have time to move away from the burning computer... wtf?? Can somebody say 'photoshop'?
Man! what do you guys DO to your Dells, huh? Apparently everyone here has had theirs blow up, or has had a CS rep with a bad accent, or has had general hardware problems. I have 2 Dells, one 4 years old and one 2 years old, and they've never failed me. The couple times I've called CS, I got guys with Indian accents, but they knew what they were doing. The only maintenence I've done on my Dell is clean it. All the horror stories you here are either lies, someone who didn't treat their computer properly, or the one in a million chance that something actually went wrong (as with all computers). Open up a Dell and look inside, the thing works, and for a long time.
These photos are very likely fake. The picture is in mid-explosion...who is that fast with a camera phone? The people aren't hardly having a reaction, they're just looking at it. The lighting that the fake explosion makes on the man to the right of it does not fit in the scene one bit. Also look at the illumination of the chair almost blocked by the explosion, does that look real to you?
Guruboy wrote:
===============
All the horror stories you here are either lies, someone who didn't treat their computer properly, or the one in a million chance that something actually went wrong (as with all computers).
==========
So I've got about 2200 leased Dells here at work. Over the past 2 years we have had at least 1 hard drive failure PER WEEK. In addition to that Dell just came in and did a warranty motherboard replacement due to bad capacitors on close to half of them. That puts me around 55% chance of failure in 2 years. If I graph that linearly (and I admit not the best method when dealing with percentages) that gives me...
A "one in a million chance" that the Dell on my desk will have a hardware failure in the next 3 hours and 11 minutes!
How did you arrive at your "one in a million" statistic?