Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Dude! You Got a Dell

Steven forgot to warn us back in 2004 that when we bought a new Dell Inspiron laptop it might end up exploding. Or, more accurately, that the battery might explode [ c|net | Post | NPR ].

I half-heard the story on "Morning Edition" while driving in this morning, but missed that it applied to less-than-recent laptops, so I didn't look anything up. But the IT guy in my office remembered I'd bought a Dell a while ago, and forwarded me the link Dell is using to check battery packs — http://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/. (He'd bought a new Dell about the same time and had just checked his batteries.)

When I got home, I pulled the battery out of Evelin's computer and sure enough, it is a fire hazard. Dell is supposed to be shipping us a new one within the next few weeks.

One caveat: I initially thought the battery was okay (and so did Dell), but I decided to be safe and entered the BPPID number a second time, putting a zero (0) instead of a capital O as the first character in the last four-digit string of characters. OMGR was safe; 0MGR was bad. So be sure your Os aren't 0s.

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