Most laptop owners would never think twice of running their laptop on their lap, but this Inquirer article gives an example of what happens when things go wrong. Luckily in this case, the laptop was running unatended on a table, otherwise this would could have resulted in a serious accident.

The full Inquirer article can be read here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

While it is unclear if this was the result of using a Dell laptop with a recalled battery, it gives an example of why consumers should take battery recall warnings very seriously as the Lithium Ion batteries in these, mobile phones, PDAs and so on can self-destruct if they have a fault, such as if their circuitry allows them to be overcharged.

It's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight

No video

OMG LOL...I have a Lithium Ion battery in my camera...certainly don;t think I'll be leaving it charging overnight

Would have been fun to see a vid, though

If someone was very close to that I shudder to think what would here happened to them.

I remember the time when Lithium Ion batteries first came out, they promised to offer a better capacity to weight ratio than Ni-MH batteries, but for a long time I could never figure out why they were only available as proprietary batteries and not the usual size AA, C and D cell sizes. Well, one reason is due to the cell voltage - Ni-MH and Ni-CD cells both have a voltage of 1.2 volts per cell, while Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer batteries both have a voltage of 3.6 to 3.9 volts per cell.

With Ni-CD and Ni-MH batteries, these can take quite a lot of abuse without them rupturing. For example, you can drain the cells to zero volts and can expect them to charge back up again (assuming they are not totally flat for an extended period). Should you leave them in a charger too long which does not automatically cut off, there is also a good chance that the batteries will still work fine and I have often done this by mistake with my old 5-hour battery charger that has no automatic cut-off.

Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer batteries are quite different and will not tolerate abuse. For example, if a Lithium cell falls to below 1.5 to 2 volts, it can become permanently damaged. Worse still, if a Lithium cell is continuously charged beyond 4.3 volts, it will self-destruct. Lithium batteries also have a much shorter life than Ni-CD and Ni-MH batteries and with everyday use, they usually only last around 1.5 years and is the reason why you may hear about people complaining about their laptop batteries giving up after a year or two. However, with most consumers getting a new mobile phone every year, most generally don't experience this issue with their phones unless they are a very heavy user. This article here gives some further information on the life of Lithium Ion cells.

With the amount of cameras, mobile phones, laptops and so on that use Lithium Ion or Polymer cells, virtually all of these batteries have protection circuits to protect against excessive discharge, overcharging, short circuit, extreme temperatures and so on. However, if this circuitry fails, this is where problems often happen, especially if the overcharging protection circuitry does not work properly.

To give an idea of what happens when one of these batteries is deliberately overcharged (without protection circuitry), this Google video shows the result of over-charging a small R/C Lithium Polymer battery:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...60570423705609

This site gives a few more examples of Lithium Polymer batteries exploding and bursting into flames from overcharging:
http://www.utahflyers.org/
(Click on Lipo fires 1, 2, 3 from the left column)

Just a couple of more examples of a laptop catching fire, in this case an Apple iBook (unfortunately no video clips):
http://cbs11tv.com/consumer/local_story_143165456.html

I like to use notebooks without batteries.