'Be careful with LAPTOPS'‏

Send this as a strong REMINDER and WARNING to all of our loved ones at HOME, DORMITORIES, HOTELS and living quarters.

Operating LAPTOPS in bed or in carpet – is DANGEROUS and it KILLS!

Read and think it a hundred times!

Subject: Very useful information - 'Be careful with LAPTOPS'

While I am not sure of the veracity of this particular case, placing the laptop on soft material will allow it to sink into the material and render the little pegs below the laptop, intended to lift the laptop a bit above the surface it is on and facilitate air circulation, useless.

“A family lost their 25 years old son in a freak fire accident at home June 4th. This is exactly what happened. The son had graduated with MBA from University of Wisconsin-Madison just two weeks earlier and had returned home from the campus for a day.

He had lunch with his dad at home and decided to go back to clean up his room at the campus. However, his dad told him to wait and see his mother before returning to the campus as she was due back from work in couple of hours. He decided to take a snooze while waiting for his mom while his dad went out.

Neighbors called 911 when they saw black smoke coming out of the house.The 25 year old died in the three year old house. It took several days of investigation to find out the cause of the fire. It was determined that the fire was caused by a lap top in bed.

When the lap top is on the bed, the area below it is blocked and the cooling fan does not get air to cool it and that is what caused the fire. The boy did not even wake up to make any effort to get out of bed as he died of massive carbon monoxide inhalation. The purpose of this "forward" is to make the receiver aware that most of us use our lap top in bed and often go to sleep with it next to us. Please make it a practice not to do that. The risk is very real. Make it a rule not to use the lap top on bed.”

Fires have indeed been caused by laptops left on beds or couches. An August 2009 CBC news reports describes a case in which a Vancouver man died in a fire caused by an overheating laptop. The report notes:

The fire started after the computer was left on a couch, plugged in and turned on. Because of the lack of ventilation under the laptop, less than an hour later the lithium-ion battery overheated and burst into flames, sparking the fire that eventually killed the man.

In fact, a number of other laptop related fires have also been reported over the last few years.