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MacBook's Battery Goes Boom in London Office

by Tim Stevens on February 27, 2009 at 12:15 PM

MacBook's Battery Goes Boom
It's been quite some time since we've had a good exploding battery story. Back in 2007, it seemed like nobody was immune from the plague, with Sony being blamed for battery recalls extending to laptops from Apple, Dell, Toshiba, and a number of others. Given that was so long ago and the news was so widely publicized, we'd figured everyone would have, by now, swapped their recalled batteries for free replacements. Apparently, we were mistaken -- some unlucky soul's aging Apple PowerBook self-destructed in a London office yesterday, sending six-foot flames shooting to the ceiling.

The laptop apparently started smoking, then sparking, then a massive pillar of flame blew out of it that reached the ceiling. It took an entire fire extinguisher bottle to put out the flames, but even then it was still glowing red and dripping slag. It's believed that the laptop is three or four years old, and nobody is sure whether it had its battery replaced during those 2007 recalls. We're guessing it didn't.

If you have an older PowerBook and aren't sure if you need a new battery, head over to Apple's Battery Exchange site and check your serial numbers. Better to be safe than get burned! [From: The Inquirer]

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Tags: apple, apple macbook, AppleMacbook, batteries, battery, battery recall, BatteryRecall, exploding batteries, exploding battery, ExplodingBatteries, ExplodingBattery, killer gadgets, KillerGadgets, laptop, macbook, sony battery, SonyBattery

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