Blazing laptop of death claims one A laptop left running on a sofa started a fire which killed a 56-year-old Canadian man. The Coroner's Service of British Columbia has not released the victim's name but has revealed that he died six months ago. The machine was left on a couch, which caused the battery to overheat and the fire to start. The coroner did not give …
...remove the battery.
When I'm at home, I take the battery out an run off the mains. Charging and discharging kills battery life. Attempting to continue charging a full battery (which most laptops do) kills battery life. Charging a battery, and more importantly attempting to continue charging a full battery, generates a lot of heat. Even if this heat reaches the shut-off sensors for the processor, switching off the processor doesn't stop the source of the heat: the battery. In fact, by making more power available to the battery charger, a heat cut-out increases the risk of the battery overheating and setting itself alight.
Probably.
(I am not a chemist or an electrician.)
CTV's Canada AM blabbered out "Hewlett Packard". See
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090826/Laptop_Fire_090826/20090826?hub=Canada
The machine in question had been the subject of a recall. In the old days, one was cautioned about smoking in bed. I guess surfing in bed is the 21st century equivalent.
Sounds like the high-tech equivalent of the chip pan fire, and I'm surprised the coroner / fire commissioner didn't mention smoke detectors.
What I want to know is why any equipment allows itself to reach such critical temperatures that it explodes, catches fire, or ignites soft furnishings and doesn't just shut down before then. There's got to be a product liability issue in this, even though the user made a mistake.
Need a popcorn icon.
Totaly agree with you but you mentioned "The Peoples Princess" in a way that was not showering her with light and sweetness - I shall now sit back and watch you get roasted by Daily Express Readers, who will no doubt send you to Hull with a one way ticket.
When the notebook manufacturers are the only ones to offer servicing, the price is outrageous, and after 2 years even that option is gone, should we just wait for the inevitable fire?
Notebooks are many things wonderful, but lack physical/material standards and non-warranty-voiding, competitive service options - even better, user instructions for self-servicing during and beyond the warranty period.
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/ You might want to read about batteries and their myths and truths.
Of course charge/discharge cycles kill batteries (some faster than others) but that's what they are designed to do ... be used up. Walking wears your knee and ankle joints too ... do you plan on stopping walking? Nothing is permanent and in the case of batteries their replacement is intentionally made easier for that vary reason.
You remind me of a friend who bought the soundtrack of a movie he loved but wouldn't listen to it because he was afraid he'd get to the point of not liking it.
any laptop I've had since my first in 2002 has automatically stopped charging the battery at 100% and only restarted charging when the battery drops below 95% of charge.
Best way to keep Lion cells working is keep them partly charged (they dislike being fully charged or totally discharged)
L-ion batts are inherently volatile due to what they are made out of.....i.e. Lithium
I can say with 100% certainty that every Lithium-Ion powered device (laptop, phone or otherwise) made by a real manufacturer does stop charging the battery when it is full.
Even the majority of fakes do this.
How do I know this? Because Li-Ion cells 'vent with flame' when significantly overcharged, almost every single time.
So we'd see a fire every day if they didn't.
"...remove the battery."
The problem with that is the some laptops (I've had at least two) route mains power through the battery - so if the battery isn't there physically then the power adaptor does zip and the laptop remains dead.
I've also had one machine (a Dell Latitude) that objected vehemently to me removing the battery (it failed) where the machine POST'd fine, but then gave me a BIOS error screen claiming that the battery 'had failed or was not present' with the sole option being pressing a key to shutdown.
So, it's a nice idea to remove the battery when on mains, but isn't practical in all circumstances. Furthermore from watching the power light on my Dell D620 it would appear that this 'trickle charges' the battery when full. Checking the battery meter app on Ubuntu seems to bear this out.
I'm still kind of confused as to why the _laptop_ caught fire, usually if they overheat they just shutdown. In which case my money would be on the cause being a battery short or something amiss with the surface that it was resting on.
Any fire safety engineers out there in the Reg Land care to comment?
@Spleen: Any notebook will overheat when on a soft surface with it's vents blocked, smartarse.
@Estariel: They aren't called Laptops any more, the manufacturers deliberately call them Notebooks because no, you're not supposed to put them on your lap. The Evil Apple Corporation of Doom that everyone likes to bleat about actually advises users NOT to put notebooks on their laps to avoid burning.
"(I am not a chemist or an electrician.)"
Really ? Thanks for the clarification. Your comment did nothing to give that away.
When I leave home I flip the main circuit breaker. You cant trust the switches on those televisors.
And watch out for the overheating batteries on your smoke alarms. Best to take them out at night if you ask me.
(I am a microelectronics designer and rocket scientist.)
My alternative to this is running it on battery power (more convenient, if a little slower) until just about dead, and then plugging it in (repeat ad-infinitum). Not certain if this is the BEST method, but it's worked for me previously with things like my moby battery (2 years and counting and still going strong)!
As to Lady Di (as I still like to think of her), well yes it has often occurred to me the mentality of someone sitting in the back of a bloddy great Merc driving through a city at night at 90+mph who doesn't think "oh shit, I think I'd really feel a lot happier belted up right now!" :-\
"My alternative to this is running it on battery power (more convenient, if a little slower) until just about dead, and then plugging it in (repeat ad-infinitum). Not certain if this is the BEST method, but it's worked for me previously with things like my moby battery (2 years and counting and still going strong)!"
Actually for Lithium, it isn't the best thing to do at all.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/07/beginners_battery_maintenance/
Basically, use the battery as it will degrade over time anyway. Don't worry about recharge cycles, partial discharge/recharge actually strains the battery less and modern batteries have circuits to monitor and prevent overcharge/over drain.
If you ever leave a battery for some time, charge it and stick in in the Fridge :-)
I have a cheap Averatech laptop. It has sensors to turn the fans on and off.
When I dual-booted it with Linux, I discovered that Linux didn't talk to the fans properly. Therefore, the fans would not come on when the system got hot.
It could still read from the sensors, just not trigger the fans.
When the internal temp reported by ACPI hit about 190°F (88°C), it would power itself off immediately.
That feature saves me from a fiery death and probably cost the manufacturer about 3¢ to include.
Since the laptop in question was subject to a recall, I'm guessing HP also includes such trivial safety devices but that in this case, it was faulty.
Not completely true- Dell has had their service manuals availible on their public site for quite some time now, and they are reasonably decent to service and dig stuff out of. (unlike a certain fruit based company which is Oh-so-clever with their design and requires four arms, two specialty tools, and a live chicken to dig the hard drive out of some of their older laptop designs.)
Mines the one with the micro-torx drivers in the pocket.
Was it Sony battery?If you have a laptop its worth checking the battery and see if it is a Sony battery(usually manufactured in Japan) as it may be subject to a recall.
I had a battery failure on a Dell Latitude D630 I purchased in 2007 and the battery was a Japanese Sony one.Someone told me to check the serial number on www.dellbatteryprogram.com and guess what its part of a recall
@pretty well everyone above
The story does not say that the laptop caught fire, it says the fire was started by the laptop being left running on the sofa.
It's more likely that the localised heat from the improperly vented machine caused the sofa to spontaneously ignite - it may not have been made of flame-retardant materials or the heat build-up may have been sufficient to overcome them.
So...taking the battery out would have made zero difference.
Like a few other people have commented, my experience with notebooks (I've currently got four in my house and have used a variety from mainstream manufacturers over the last 15 years) is that when they get hot, usually from lack of ventilation combined with running demanding applications (Far Cry really warms up my son's HP), they just shut down.
Given the number of notebooks now in use in homes, you'd think that five incidents over five years (according to the article) is pretty low. Were these figures just for British Columbia or the whole of Canada?
Still, this is very sad for the gentleman's relatives and friends; notebooks users should take note of the safety advice, especially parents of children who may be using these devices in bedrooms full of soft furnishings.
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