MacBook goes up in flames
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
12th March 2007 23:34 GMT
In the latest episode of The Laptop Infernos, a MacBook user is
reporting his laptop came close to burning his house down after the
battery exploded and burst into flames. The MacBook, which
was less than a year-old, was charging with the lid shut when it
spontaneously ignited at about three in the morning while the user
and his girlfriend slumbered.
"My girlfriend said she heard it hissing like a steam valve, then
smoke started pouring out of it and a couple of seconds later, a
very large flash firm started," he wrote in the Australian website
MacTalk (Check out the link for pics of the damage). "I picked it
up and blew on it and swung it around to put the flames out."
"The battery is swollen and burnt so it's definitely the battery
that exploded and caught fire. The macbook is melted on the bottom
and severely charred (along with my bookshelves, books, magazines
and the wall). The space bar is melted as is the track pad."
The sad tale brings to mind last year's recall of defective Sony
lithium-ion batteries after the discovery they had the potential -
and in many cases the demonstrated ability - to cause notebooks
made by Dell, Apple, Lenovo and others to turn into toxic of metal
and plastic. According to MacRumors, Apple uses Lithium Polymer
batteries for its MacBook and MacBook Pro lineup, supposedly
because the batteries are less prone to catching fire.
The MacBook owner in this case said he had noticed his MacBook's
battery life over the past three weeks had been in decline and the
symbol indicating how much juice was left had been acting erratic.
Hours before the fire broke out he had trouble getting the machine
to wake up. He plugged in the laptop and it started, but the
machine indicated the battery reserve was 0 percent. After surfing
for a bit, he put the notebook to sleep mode and left it to
charge.
As unsettling as it was to pick up and blow on a flaming laptop at
3 AM in your jam-jams, or to lose precious data on his hard drive,
the poster said there was one trauma topping the list.
"The smell was the worst part - that burnt plastic
smell."
http://mactalk.com.au/forums/showthread.php?t=28926
