News Bits: Dell Laptop on Couch Ignites, Transmeta Quits Processors, Valentine's Day Laptop

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A house in Maine burns down after owner leaves Dell laptop charging on couch

A 130 year old house in Biddeford Maine burns due to bad mix of Dell Inspiron 1200 and a couch (view large image)

A word to the wise -- do not leave your laptop on a couch or bed while plugged in and charging and then leave it. While it could be argued a laptop charging unit should never get so hot as to ignite foam-based home furniture, it's just best not to try this anyway. A family in Biddeford Maine last week lost their home in a blaze when a Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop that was plugged in and recharging on the couch while the family was out somehow got so hot that it ignited the couch on fire. Apparently the cord, power unit or battery was the source for this heat. It does not appear the battery exploded violently, the Inspiron 1200 was not part of the massive Sony battery recall that took place last year.

(view large image)

According to the state fire marshal investigator Christopher Stanford &quot;The couch was totally burned out and the laptop was still sitting on what remained of the sofa&quot;. The damage for the 130-year old house was most severe in the area where the laptop and power cord were located, and thus the conclusion for the source. The damage to the house exceeded $100,000 and at that is a total loss.

Read More (Computer World)

Biddeford Maine Fire Dept. Related Page

Transmeta backs out of processor business

Transmeta this week decided to step away from the processor business, and refocus itself on licensing of intellectual property - no more chips.

Lester Crudele, president and CEO of Transmeta, said in a statement that &quot;After a critical evaluation of all our lines of businesses, we have decided that IP development and licensing will be our core business activity going forward. We continue to believe that this is the best way for us to deliver our technology to the market and monetize our investments. Therefore, we have initiated a restructuring plan to re-align our headcount and expenses accordingly.&quot;

Transmeta started its transitioning by reducing its workforce by about 39% to 117; it will continue to reduce its workforce during the next two quarters.

Transmeta was unable to compete with AMD and Intel - the company has been licensing its technologies to third parties who want to reduce power consumption.

Read More (Xbit Labs)

Micrsoft working on Vista's successor for 2009

Now that Vista is finished, Microsoft is working on its next client operating system, due out by the end of 2009. According to the schedule, the turnaround time should be far faster than Windows Vista's was. Vista shipped out 2.5 years after XP SP2 was released; Microsoft had put all their energy into securing Windows XP with SP2, and put Longhorn on the back burner.

The codename for the next-gen OS is &quot;Vienna,&quot; but that's going off of what Microsoft said last year. Nothing has been confirmed. The coolest features of it are being worked on right now.

Read More (PC World)

Tulip offers Valentine's Day laptops

Image courtesy of Engadget

If you have a significant amount of money to burn for Valentine's Day, Tulip has an offering to consider- the Ego Love Edition. It is tailored specifically for Valentine's Day, and features a leather-wrapped exterior with a stitched heart in the middle. On the top is a pricey bow and pendant. It is available in a variety of colors. Oddly enough, no specifications are to be found, nor is any pricing information.

Read More (Engadget)

Developing nations preparing to test $150 laptops

Some of the world's poorest children will be using the new $150 laptops this month. The non-profit OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) organization will be producing 2,500 of the laptops for eight nations in February. Mass production of the $150 laptops is scheduled to begin in July.

According to the project operators, the price will fall to $100 per laptop next year, when they hope to crank out 50 million of the XO (as it is called) machines. The price is expected to go below $100 in 2010, when the OLPC organization hopes to reach 150 million children in developing nations. The project is not without its criticism - some say the project is a financial burden with no guarantee of success. Others say the money would be better spent on libraries, medicine, and food.

Read More (Yahoo! News)

 

I feel bad for the people who lost there house, I think it is rediculus how hot those power bricks get, my acer came with a lite on brand power adapter and it gets so hot when charging that it WILL burn you if you hold the charger, oh well I guess I won't charge while iam away from home.

 

Dell and other manufactures should redesign those power bricks and batteries soon.

Personally I don't think Vienna will be released before the end of the decade, I'm guessing more like 2011-2012.

Those crazy Valentine's day laptops are hideous btw. Are there actually people who would use them? Imagine the attention (laughter) one of those things would draw on a plane.

 

Me to. My heart goes out to them. That Valentines Day Tulip is just to rediculous. xD

 

then again perhaps it was not the laptop that started the fire and there is simply no way to determine the difference once it got to a certain point. Or it might not be possible to differentiate between any accelerant and the burned up foam which was likely produced from oil...insurance fires happen all the time and given the public attention given to the battery issue what better way to convince Dell to just pay the people off in a soft real estate market.

Sorry as hot as laptops get I cannot imagine it would get to the 300-400ish degrees it would take to ignite the couch...unless the battery exploded along the way. And the article specifically indicated the battery did not explode. Then again there is spontaneous combustion...

Then again it's Dell so HA-HA...Dell is screwed, again...they deserve it!!

 

My brother actually has a Dell 1200 laptop (it's in sorry shape with the abuse he's given it) and he puts it on his bed all the time to charge it. It gets way hot. I imagine in an old house with old electric wiring high power draw could cause sparks in the plug area to get this fire going. Sucks.

 

The people who lost their house... terrible. But can't they take Dell to court for a settlement? It seems to be a sound reason to go to court.

 

abax:

Now THAT makes sense, that the wiring in the house overheated. Especially if the house had aluminium wiring...my place is old and has aluminium which can overheat very quickly if there is a short anywhere in the line. I am slowly replacing the circuits but it takes time. First thing I did when I bought the place was change all the recepticles and switches and many were ready to flame-on...

 

Only if the computer was at fault and even then who knows...if it was the wiring then no the people/insurance company would likely not be able to sue Dell.

As long as these folks had homeowners insurance they have nothing to worry about beyond the policy exclusions.

 

My heart goes out to those people... but to be fair to Dell, their laptops are a lot better now... My 640m's processor bearly goes about 40 celcius and the power brick is almost always cool, even after having the laptop on for an entire day.

 

Well, they did lose all their stuff... Still, even I can't imagine leaving a laptop turned on on the couch, and I'm as careless as they come. I had spilled coffee on my laptop, and when it was getting repaired, spilled water on the keyboard of a desktop I was using while my lappy was away. Totally killed it.

Oh, and that Tulip thing... At first, I thought someone just photoshopped it 'coz it's so fugly. But then I go to Tulip's website and, lo and behold... A special present for you and your partner. Say what??? Anyway, at least the ugliness comes off and can be replaced with a different skin. What a consolation.

Malia

 

I thought that was a purse

I feel sorry for the family of the burned house. Hopefully their insurance will cover it, and they learn from their mistakes (no more Dell until they really fix up their problems).

 

i think that it is partly the owner's fault that his house burned down because of his laptop because if he was stupid enough to leave his laptop on the couch where it can catch fire easily, then it serves him right that his house burns down because of it

 

Hope Dell or the insurance company gets those people a new home. That's really sad. I can't tell if the system was powered on while on the couch or not. The article is kind of unclear in that respect. It's absolutely retarded to let a powered on laptop sit on a couch without being lifted or off the edge to allow for airflow. Letting it sit and charge while powered down is a totally different thing. Systems really should never get that hot. I thought there was a certain point where the computer would power itself off anyway.

About Vista, if they're already moving on to work on a future version of Windows then that to me labels Vista as abandonware. It looks like Microsoft wants to treat its releases of Windows like a video game that comes out every 2 or 3 years while doing a little bit of patching but mainly focussing on future iterations. For as expensive as Windows is and because OS's are so important for computers, that sort of strategy instantly pisses me off. I moved from Windows 3.1 to Win98 to WinXP and I will definitely be letting Vista pass on by. It's just not worth the effort and expense. Also, it seems to me Microsoft thinks it should be making more money than it is already due to poor performance from their entertainment lines and the long time gap between Windows iterations.

Transmeta...I haven't heard their name mentioned in years. Too bad they weren't able to give Intel and AMD a run for their money. I'd particularly love to see Intel take on two competitors rather than just one.

 

heh...Looks like power adaptors and batteries need massive heatsinks and fans of their own How unfortunate. I hope those owners of that house have insurance. They could always file a case against Dell or Sony.

BTW, would any of you girls actually USE that laptop ?

 

Vista IS a HUGE upgrade from XP. Auto Defrag, windows defender, efficient use of multiple cores, extremely efficient memory management etc.

The fact that Microsoft is starting on its new OS does not mean they are abandoning VISTA. Microsoft is a huge company, and continuously expanding. Most of the Vista teams will stay and work on service packs. Its not easy to add-on to an existing operating system, so dedicating all SDE's to Vista is dumb, so instead Microsoft is starting on its new OS which will probably include certain things Vista dev's couldn't include.

 

Lost there 160 years old house!? That is just terrible! I think that all manifacturers should build a temperature sensor in batteries so that when overheating the battery stops working/recharching.

About that new Vista: I am not going to use Vista now, I am going to wait for a year. All programs (like Notebook Hardware Control and other 3rd party things) are not yet designed for Vista.
Vista looks good but not as user-friendly as XP.

About that Valentine notebook: garbage. Pay 5000$ for a notebook in the shape of a hard? You must be kidding me...

 

Aren't there warnings and things that come with laptops about not blocking ports and not leaving them on soft surfaces? I need to check my manual!

 

Leaving a laptop on the couch is like leaving the stove on when you go out. Just stupidity.

 

I hope those people from the house have insurance as well. That is a shame. I agree that batteries need to come with their own sensor in them, so they can stop charging when they get hot. It is ridiculous that a battery can get that hot, even if it was the wiring that caused the fire. Dell, Sony and other manufacturers need to come up with something new.

As for the laptop, I though it was fake at first. Way to expensive for a laptop that looks like a kids toy.

 

with a laptop like that, what it actually does is not why it was purchased.

And I don't remember either of my laptops coming with big warning labels to always place on a hard surface. If it's that big a deal (that it could burn a house down) then they shouldn't depend on people to read the manual to find that out - hardly anyone does, and it is not something immediately apparent to the those who don't deal with technology too much.

 

That really is too bad about the house. Really a sad story.

I'm also bummed about hearing that Microsoft is planning on replacing Vista by '09. By the time I'm looking at another system, the Vista vs. Vienna talk will have started already.

I still like XP ;p.