A family in Leicestershire almost got a face full of battery as their Dell Latitude C600 shot batteries across the room in a dramatic, but luckily not deadly, display.
The notebook, a Dell Latitude C600, was left alone in the family home to load a game. When the Allens came in to see how it was doing, the machine blew up.
"There are six batteries inside a compartment, and they were shooting out like fireworks, like rockets," Shaun Allen, 39, told the paper. "They even bounced off the ceiling, they went up that high."
The family's sofa and carpet also caught on fire. Dell claims that because the family bought the laptop second-hand for
500, there was probably a third-party battery loaded in there, which in turn caused the explosion. But, Dell coughed up another laptop for the family anyway, as a "gesture of goodwill".
Dell laptop detonates in UK home [Reg Hardware]