Laptop batteries have been exploding for a long time, but it’s been a phenomenon I’d largely ignored until now when I read an “Inquirer article”:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38176 about a MacBook exploding this morning. Then I went in search of evidence. I found this “video”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWq6rWzChw&mode=related&search= and I realized that when they say exploding, they actually do mean *exploding.*
According to an article on the subject at “Howstuffworks.com”:http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dell-battery-fire.htm , these explosions/meltings/fires are caused by small amounts of metal floating in the lithium fluid piercing the separation walls between the cells, causing a short circuit. Bad luck eh?
Tag Archives: computers
Lego computer
So we’re all big nerds right? Well it turns out that some of us are way cooler nerds than others and have managed to combine the childhood obsession with building things, Lego construction, with the more adult version, computer-building. I was hunting around for cool case ideas for a home theatre PC I’m thinking of building when I came across this cool Lego computer case by “Winston Chow”:http://www2.hawaii.edu/~wchow/ at the University of Hawaii.
The build is recounted “here”:http://home.hawaii.rr.com/chowfamily/lego/
Bullet-proof, the new trend in laptop marketing
They say good things come in threes. Well if that’s true then sometime in the near future there’s going to be a Sony Vaio sporting a bullet wound because Panasonic and Apple already have their scars. In one of the stranger coincidences to hit mobile computing, there have been two stories this month about computers stopping bullets for their owners, the first was this Panasonic Toughbook used by US soldiers in Iraq:
It’s sad when our military personnel have more heavily armored computers than humvees, but I think that’s a different discussion. The second computer to take a licking was this MacBook Pro which, according to this “Wired article,”:http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/2007/02/bullet_doesnt_s.html earned its purple heart in a Brazilian mugging.
It seems there is actually a reason that people pay a premium for titanium computer casing, this thing still works!