Hoverboards won’t stop exploding lately, perhaps due to overheating batteries. But what if the battery could shut off before all hot and flamey? That’s the idea behind recent research at Stanford, and the benefits go far beyond gimmicky gadgets looking to avoid recalls.
My new favorite blog, Misuse.su, is like a Russian Fail Blog for the repurposes (and misuse) of products. From using a laptop as a nutcracker, to a power-drill as a foosball table handle, it's full of craziness. [Misuse via Core77]
Garmin today announced that they're recalling five Nuvi models—the 200W, 250W, 260W, 7xx and 7xxT (where xx is a two-digit number)—totaling 1.25 million units in all. 796,000 of those were sold in the united states. The culprit, according to today's press release, were batteries manufactured by a third-party that are…
Apple's been slapped with many lawsuits for overheating products in the past, but over in Asia, iPhone owners are finding out the hard way that 95 per cent humidity isn't the best treatment for the temperature-uncomfortable phones.
I remember the first time my laptop overheated on me, and how thankful I was for not wearing synthetic trousers that day. Lifehacker has done a brilliant job explaining how to prevent your computer from overheating; check it out. [Lifehacker]
The recall comes after 12 complaints of overheating, including five cases that caused fire and property damage. The $29 Chinese-made cheapies were sold from January 2006 to July 2009, exclusively at Wal-Mart (U.S) and ASDA supermarkets (U.K).
Does it get this hot? Hotter? Nice work as usual, Penny Arcade. [PA]
Sick and tired of never getting even close to the 10 to 12 hours of battery life advertised by PC companies on your laptop? Sony hears you, and is taking pains to improve at least one thing about their power packs. No, not the overheating factor, though they say they've got that somewhat under control now, honest!…
Sony's issuing a recall for Vaio TZ laptops sold between May 2007 and July 2008: apparently there's a risk of overheating leading to "abnormal heat deformation of the enclosure"—which sounds like a lot more than the usual knee-burn heat of a laptop. It's not due to the battery, mind you, rather it seems like a…
Even after Nvidia downplayed their original report that GeForce 8400-8700 cards were failing in large numbers due to overheating, Dell has issued a BIOS update for all of its machines running the affected GPUs anyway. The update tweaks the fan settings to "regulate temperature fluctuations" to keep the…
T-Mobile is replacing all HTC Wing batteries, swapping the default Dynapack battery for a newer Celxpert one. The note attached to the replacement says, "T-Mobile and HTC are providing a replacement for the T-Mobile Wing battery made by Dynapack at not charge to you due to rare occurrences of the battery overheating."…
Because Microsoft will never admit to any possible overheating problems with their beloved Xbox 360 design, Japanese-based Nikkei hired a thermal design expert to come examine the console. They looked at two—one made in 2005 and one repaired in May 2007. Here's what they found:
It is also noted that he isn't the only one dealing with some hot fon problems. A lot of users on the Fon message boards are reporting heating issues, none of which seem to be as extreme as this guys', but nevertheless, a melting router is never a good thing. There is no official work from Fonero, but I would probably…
Once was a stretch. Twice was a coincidence. Three times? It's an epidemic. Reader Angus apparently had the same (melted) problems as our other two readers.
So, remember that melted laptop? Yes, the one that the Genius Bar employees and more-than 5,000 Gizmodo readers thought was foul play in an attempt to get a new laptop. Well, another e-mail popped in our box just now, with an almost identical incident happening to someone else many years ago, when the laptops were…
This little diddy popped into our mailbox this morning. Apparently this G4 laptop was rather warm, and the owner left and came back to find it like this. The geniuses at the Apple Genius Bar claimed the keys were melted from "the old hair dryer trick."
Good ol' TechEBlog has been on a "Top X" binge as of late, but this one dealing with five wild and crazy ways to use you MacBook [Pro] is actually, you know, interesting. It's no secret that the Apple's MacBook line of notebooks tends to run a little on the warm side, so some brave soul took it upon himself to cook a…
Although reapplying the thermal grease in a MacBook Pro has been successful in curing the overhearing problems for some users, James Davidson of MacDevCenter found out it wasn't actually the paste that was causing the heat problems.
Apple sneaked through a firmware update on Tuesday for MacBook Pro notebooks, failing to mention that it was intended to fix overheating issues in the laptops. The firmware update dealt with the system management controller, the part of the MacBook Pro that controls power and thermal conditions. Users of Apple's…
Phillips is having trouble with 12,000 of its plasma TVs, and the company has agreed to repair them because of an overheating problem. Its 42-inch and 50-inch Ambilight models, TVs that have special lighting in the back that changes with whatever's on the screen, are having trouble with arcing capacitors inside.
