Airlines react to more flaming laptops
Anand Parthasarathy Blogging sites post news and pictures of portable PC batteries on fire TOO HOT TO HANDLE: The charred remains of a laptop that caught fire!in Yahoo's U.S. office on Wednesday. (Right) A burnt-out IBM laptop in the departure area of Los Angeles International Airport last week. Bangalore: The Hindu 's report on August 17 suggested that the ``Laptop recall may affect makers other than Dell too.'' Sadly, that has happened all too soon. Many blogging sites on the Web were ablaze last week with news and pictures of two other dramatic incidents, where laptop batteries caught fire, causing a building to be evacuated and alarms to go off in an international airport departure area. On Wednesday, another Dell laptop PC caught fire in the 8th floor Santa Clara-based offices of Internet portal Yahoo, causing the fire brigade to be called and the entire office building evacuated. The owner had apparently not sent the battery for exchange after Dell first took note of the problem in August. The laptop was brought out and a bystander, Kevin Collins, posted a photo of the charred machine on the photo-sharing website, flickr.com. William Shatner, happened to be in Los Angeles International Airport last weekend, when a fellow passenger about to board an United Airlines flight to London, came rushing back and flung to the floor his too-hot-to-handle laptop - an IBM/Lenovo ThinPad. In seconds, it burst into flames like a firecracker and left a deep burn patch on the floor. Mr. Shatner snapped photos with his camera-phone and posted two of them on the SomethingAwful blogging site, with a first person account of the incident. Both laptops use the Sony Lithium-ion batteries that have now been recognised as the problem. Since Dell first recalled over a million of these batteries in August, Apple has followed suit and this week Toshiba has recalled some 340,000 of the batteries - also made by Sony - that go into its laptops. Lenovo, which now owns the IBM notebook brand, has so far not recalled its batteries, but may be forced to act now. In another ironical development, bloggers are gleefully recalling Apple's 1998 advertisement campaign called `toasted bunny' which showed a fireman putting out an Intel chip plant worker in his `bunny suit,' which was on fire... a supposedly funny comment on the amount of power Intel chips consumed. Today, Apple has shifted to the Intel range of processors, ditching the ``Power PC'' series of chips it had always sworn by. At least three airlines - Virgin Atlantic, Qantas and Korean Air - have begun asking their passengers to remove the batteries from their Dell and Apple notebooks before taking the flight. This means only passengers in the upper classes where an onboard supply is provided can use their laptops while they fly. They and other airlines are expected to enlarge the ban to all laptops - in view of this week's incendiary episodes. Planning to fly? Don't count on doing too much work on your laptop in the coming days. Carry a good book instead. Have a nice day Shadab Husain Mo: 9335206224 To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
