When Tina McChristian was driving with her granddaughter, her Kyocera phone started to sizzle and then exploded, propelling the battery in to her granddaughter's car seat, according to the Wireless Consumers Alliance - and it's not just an isolated incident. Granted, we found out that the Korean man was killed not by his exploding cell phone but by a coworker. Even if it's infrequent in nature, especially considering the millions and millions of people with cell phones, an exploding cell phone can still be traumatic.
Cell phones are one home electronic that can go awry...throw in desktops, notebook computers, external hard drives, kitchen appliances, and we're sure you've got stories. What's the worst home tech disaster you've experienced?
The death of a HD right after we moved all the London pictures from camera to the HP laptop. We lost all of them.
...follow the white rabbit...
view ffffffrabbit's profile
Not sure if it qualifies, but we had a refrigerator burst into flame once. That was a fun morning.
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We had a lightning strike here in July. The strike hit an external antenna that were normally connected to my shortwave radios. I say that because about 30 seconds before the strike, I had disconnected the antennas. Didn't make a difference. Two radios were destroyed, including one obscure tabletop model that included an option to decode digital shortwave broadcasts that isn't available any more. A third radio that wasn't even plugged in or connected to the antenna system was also damaged (and has since been repaired, something that wasn't an option for the other two radios). The strike travelled out of the radios into a loop antenna that I used to hear AM radio stations in Europe and Africa from my location in New Jersey and severely damaged it. That item hasn't been manufactured in years as well; it's currently with the manufacturer hopefully being refurbished if possible. The strike also travelled out an audio port to my Linux computer, which I had been using to decode those digital shortwave broadcasts and as a PVR with an HDTV card. The computer was fried. The strike also travelled out the same radio's serial port, through a USB-serial adapter, which exploded about six inches from where I was sitting, and into the USB port of our three month old Mac Pro, which I was trying to shut down when the strike occurred. The Mac Pro was fried, as was the 23 inch Cinema Display connected to it. My Palm Tungsten C was in its cradle recharging. It got quite a charge; it died. My 80 GB iPod was also connected at the time. It appeared to survive, but the power connection was vaporized, so once the battery discharged, it was impossible to recharge it, and it died. My Epson scanner was connected to the USB port; it died. My M-Audio FireWire Solo audio interface died. My USB turntable, which I had been using to digitize my album collection, lost its USB connection and is now useless. My EyeTV 250 was fried, and provided the strike with its way out of the house; the strike travelled down the cable TV line, out of the house, and up the telephone pole, where it blew a fuse and bled to ground, taking out our TV and Internet service.
Apple covered the Mac and iPod. For the rest, I got a lesson in insurance company math, where numbers don't behave the way you were taught in school.
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sciencegeek - how did that happen?!?
ralph - ho. ly. wow.
were you home when it happened? if not, how did you know, other than the things not working? just for my education - were any of these on surge protected power strips? Just wondered if that had helped at all or didn't protect at all.
I am so sorry to hear about all of the great things that you lost.
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ralph: holy sh#t. that's all I can say.
kate: Some part, I think a converter, melted and eventually lit on fire. It was unpleasant smelling and somewhat scary to have to unplug a flaming appliance. And it was lots of fun to move all the stuff out of it suddenly while it was still somewhat on fire.
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