Axehole

Apple fans take note: you’ve been warned about the way Mac laptops can burn your crotch. Not only can they cook your eggs, but laptops from Apple and other manufacturers can explode in flames.

Nick Brown, 11, was playing on his Apple iBook laptop about one month ago when he got distracted and left the room.

His mom, Cindy Brown, explains what happened next. “My husband and I were in the other room, heard a popping noise, came out and the room was filled with smoke,” she said. Heat from the laptop, which was lying on the floor, had started melting the carpet. The Browns quickly carried it outside.

Pictures show flames shooting from the lower right hand corner of the laptop. The area around the lower right side was blackened by burns.

“It was five minutes and (the computer) was in flames,” Cindy Brown said. “The computer burst into flames. It doesn’t seem real that you would have a fire in a computer. We all could have died, and the house could have burned down.”

Laptops do sometimes burst into flames. There are at least 43 reported incidents in the last two years. In 2004 and 2005, Apple, Dell and Hewlett Packard collectively recalled more than 300,000 laptop batteries “due to fire hazards.”

The Browns’ case is now under investigation by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.