Man says Dell battery burned down house

Oh, Dell. First your batteries overheated. Then they started blowing up. And now, according the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, they might be burning down houses.

Louis Minnear, a South Venice, Fla., homeowner, claims that his wife's Dell laptop battery was responsible for a fire early Thursday morning that left his family of five (plus two dogs) homeless. The fire, according to Minnear, began on the family's couch, where the laptop had been sitting. The computer apparently was a 2-year-old Latitude D500, one of the models affected by Dell's recent battery recall.

The local fire marshal, according to the Herald-Tribune, has not yet arrived at a conclusion on the cause of the fire.

P.S. If you're a Dell owner who's had your Sony battery recalled, backup company Carbonite is offering three free months of online system backup to PC users affected by the exploding-battery fiasco.