Inconvenient? Yes. Outrageous? Hardly. Like most safety concerns, give it a short while until people see that the threat of whatever was banned is minimal, then everything goes about as normal again. Of course, it only has to happen once for the rule to hit the books, then take forever to disappear.

Sounds like a cheap way to get first class. Buy some crappo Dell laptop and you get a free upgrade to first class and VISTAAAAA!!!!

FREE upgrade? Doubtful...

It's not a free upgrade to first class.

it's not like they explode - even if they did catch fire it would take about 1.4 seconds to extinguish.

"One is to remove your battery and move up to first or business class and power your computer via power supply."

I think what you mean to say is "customers seated in First and Business must remove their batteries before plugging in to the seat power." Because the peons in steerage don't have seat power, and they can just run off the battery as you mentioned in the next sentence. No upgrade required.

I'm sure the Qantas flight attendants can't wait to enforce this. Because irritable overworked telecommuters are very gracious when you tell them to dismantle their laptop if they want to get on the plane.

>>h00ligan says:
it's not like they explode - even if they did catch fire it would take about 1.4 seconds to extinguish.<<

What was the last flight you were on where you thought "gosh, I'd like something to catch fire for 1.4 seconds?"

And, at 35,000 feet in a cramped aircraft do you really think that's the time it would take to extinguish an exploded cell? Because last time I checked there weren't extinguishers all over the plane, and it took more than 1.4 seconds to get down the aisle.

I bet it would take longer than usual while everyone is screaming and there is fire shooting out of your computer.

BTW, posts on the web today show a Vaio that caught fire, was put out, then caught fire again. The fire department came to put it out. What class on the plane do you think THEY are on?

I can't even turn on my dell laptop without the battery..

I have an idea! Get a mac! I have only hurd of 2 of the caching on fire but i have hurd of many many Dell's the have burnt down houses. I am a new mac user and I do admit that sometimes I feel like my MacBook and MacBook Pro and going to explode because they get so hot.

So, am I to understand from this that the only danger from a Dell battery exploding is when it's also plugged in to power? Couldn't the thing still explode just by running on battery?

Also note that atmospheric conditions inside an airplane at cruising altitute are not the same as here on terra firma...So fires would burn a little differently up there....

You might as well remove the battery from your laptop - seat power is extremely limited (up to around 75W), so the latest and greatest laptops often won't have enough power to run and charge (they'll trip the inverter or a breaker if you tried, or you'll get wierd results).

Intresting Article!