Fire in the Hole for Dell

Here's yet another reason that you're better off building your own rigs: you can make them fireproof. Yesterday, Dell posted a product recall announcement for the batteries that were installed in certain Inspiron 5000 series notebook computers. According to the notice posted on Dell's website, it turns out that "these batteries are subject to overcharge, potentially causing them to overheat, release smoke and possibly catch fire." According to a Techweb story, the recall involves in the neighborhood of 284,000 batteries, and an incident was reported in March where a laptop using one of the batteries actually did catch fire. Dell recalled batteries installed in other Inspiron and Latitude models last October for the same reason. To read the recall notice, visit Dell's support site , or check out Techweb's report .