A Laptop Can Make You Homeless!!!

By: Biplob Kishore Deb

I am not joking with you as such an incident happened in Florida. I came to know about this incident in an article where it was reported that a Del laptop made the fire and made the family homeless. I am quoting from that article:

A Florida man has leaped onto the Dell laptop explosion bandwagon by claiming his house was burnt to a crisp because a Dell laptop ignited his couch on fire. At about 5 a.m. Louis Minnear awoke to the smell of an electrical fire, after quickly surveying his house and finding nothing, he went back to bed. Forty-five minutes later he was awoken again, except this time to his couch on fire.

Mr. Minnear’s wife is a computer programmer and it was his wife’s laptop. He said that he lost almost everything including a huge collection of 843 DVDs. I also find this incident reported in the websites of The Ledger and HeraldTribune. Just 3 days before this incident, Dell, world’s largest PC making company, recalled 4.1 million notebook computer batteries and warned its users that it might cause fire. Now, Minnear family is in a local hotel and getting food and clothing facility provided by the American Red Cross.
In this regard Del said, “the lithium-ion batteries were made by Sony and were installed in notebooks sold between April 2004 and July 18 of this year”



Image Source: http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=1304

Though it is true that the firemen are not sure about the source of fire and fire marshal was called to investigate the source of the fire, some other such incidents have already seen. Here, I am quoting some lines from HeraldTribune about such incidents which are making this claim stronger:

So far, none of the reported fires traced to Dell batteries have been house fires. In June, a Dell notebook caught fire during a conference in a hotel in Japan. In July, a notebook got hot enough to burn the desk beneath it in Illinois. That same month, a laptop in the cab of a pickup parked in Nevada caught fire, igniting ammunition in the glove box and then the gas tanks. The truck exploded.


Now, it is yet to see that which source will be identified by the fire marshal and it is an important question that whether such fire incident will have any negative impact on Dell and if so, then how they will cope with.

Source:

Man Blames Dell Laptop for House Fire
Man Blames Dell Laptop for Fire
Laptop might not have caused house fire