Batteries!!!

It really seems like Dell is always coming up for something. This time, it's the 4.1 million laptop batteries that were just recalled. What's great is when a company as huge as Dell recalls so many parts, it's all over the news and everyone wants to talk about it. So here ya go, my take on the Dell battery situation.

First off, this isn't the first time Dell has recalled laptop parts, such as batteries or power adapters. In fact, I did a little research and dellbatteryprogram.com was registered almost a year ago, probably in response to a recall in December of 35,000 batteries. These were also recalled for heat issues, just like the current recall.

What inspired me to write this article was a certain reaction from The Professional Inventors Alliance. Their president, Ronald Riley, was recently quoted as saying "Dell does not in my opinion have the engineering expertise which other companies who actually advance the technology have." He continued to say that Dell cuts costs across the board, including the R & D department, in order to keep costs down, and that practice is why batteries are igniting. With a little innovation, this problem would not have happened. It seems Lenovo, HP, Gateway and the others who have Sony batteries would agree.

That brings me back to my last topic about heat. (In case you were wondering, 23 minutes on the phone, 4 days later a tech shows up, can't fix it, new machine about a week later. That's next-day on-site for ya.) Dell's own XPS-700 machine, the biggest dog they've ever launched, was repeatedly pushed back because of heat issues. Is it their fault or Intel/NVIDIA's for making such hot products? In a desktop, it's Dell's fault because I can build one fine.

But what about laptops? There are about 5 or 6 actual laptop manufacturers now. Dell gets most of their machines made by a company named Quanta. They basically take a stock chassis and put pretty Dell plastic all over it. Quanta then takes that same chassis as sell it to Alienware, who gets Alien plastic all over. So is it the plastic? No. The true answer is pretty simple actually:

Dell sold millions of laptops last year. They are the laptop kings, and there's significant hatred for them because of support issues like the one I just went through. When The Inquirer broke a story about an Inspiron bursting into flames, it was only a few days before more and more stories about exploding Dell's showed up. Shortly thereafter, Dell bit the bullet and dropped ~$250 Million in a PR stunt.

That's all there is too it. Whether it's cell phones, laptops, PDA's, or anything with a rechargeable battery, they are all vulnerable to battery explosion. In a cell phone, the battery is hidden away, and when it blows, it probably doesn't do too much damage. In a laptop though, the battery is mostly exposed and when it catches, it burns like the Dickens. Yes there are design cues we should take to keep damage minimal, but these things are just going to blow, no way around it.

So the big question is: "What about laptops on planes now that we know they blow up?" Well, I'll tell you one thing, the answer isn't to kick all Dells off planes. That would only take care of Dell's share. I think it's going to require a redesign of both the batteries and the machines they plug into.

Man, it's hot!

Yeah I know, I'm pretty much stating the obvious here. However, heat is currently a big deal in computers. The faster and more complex that our machines get, the more heat they put out, or at least attempt to.

Getting the heat out is the most important part of a chassis design, however the major manufacturers have apparently forgotten that golden rule.

I was working with a particular design from the most major manufacturer out there, and was utterly shocked by what I found. This particular machine has a serious airflow issue, and we can thank the new BTX format for that. This revolutionary design that the big guys have taken to recently makes for a very quiet machine, that's true. They can use just one fan to effectively cool the processor, and supposedly all the other components inside.

The problem was that under heavy I/O operation, like installing a large program, this design really doesn't do very well. See, the one big fan blows air over the processor first and foremost. While that's all great for the processor, it's not too great for everything else inside, as the air that's supposed to be cooling components is now very hot. The old design, ATX, had the air move over everything else first, and then get to the CPU and out the case.

So in this particular instance, I was installing Peachtree Accounting 2007 on this brand-new machine and it could never make it through the install. Not only would it spontaneously reboot, it wouldn't run at all for about 3-5 minutes afterwards, because the chipset was just too hot.

The funny thing is that I experienced this exact same problem in a machine I recently built and had to install a side fan just to keep the thing running. However, since I do massive testing on each and every machine in near-85 degree conditions, I located the issue and fixed it before the machine left the bench.

I wonder how the poor call center person I have to call to fix the other one will react...