Exploding laptops...the saga continues

An exploding Dell laptop was blamed for shutting down Yahoo's offices in Santa Clara, California yesterday.

The laptop caught fire on a worker’s desk on the eighth floor of the campus building, setting off smoke alarms and resulting in the whole building being evacuated.

Fire brigades arrived to find hundreds of workers outside. The offending laptop was eventually brought outside by firemen and photographed rapidly by Yahoo employees, who posted details on the web.

One employee, speaking to Valleywag, said: “The surprising thing is that it was a Dell, but nearly all Yahoo workers use Hewlett-Packard. It was in the research area. Most people were confused, thinking it was a false alarm, until they saw the laptop.”

In other news, it has been reported that a burning laptop at Los Angeles International airport was a Lenovo ThinkPad T43. The notebooks are often sold with Sony batteries like those blamed for recent recalls.

But while Lenovo has admitted that the laptop caught fire, it has not yet confirmed whether it was using a Sony battery.

The incident was reported by a blogger who saw someone rush from a boarding gate and drop his smoking laptop, which then burst into flames. Some passengers thought it was a terrorist attack.