Even if you sent your Dell battery back before it could explode and tear off half your face, you still may not be in the clear. Some computer engineers are pointing out that computer architecture might have just as much to do with the exploding Dell laptop.

“You need to know how much energy the computer extracts from the battery, and how a system is designed to manage the current flow that generates heat inside the battery. Knowing the limitation at the critical temperature is important,” said the improbably named Bodo Arlt, publisher of Bodo’s Power Systems Magazine in Germany.

The problem with the architecture is that Dell places the battery near the hottest areas of the computer, where as other laptop companies try to put it someplace… you know…. cooler. Where it won’t explode.And, of course, there is no thermometer that automatically shuts down the computer either.

As if to emphasize the rareness of a battery defect causing a Dell to explode, the truck of Thomas Forqueran was burnt to a cinder by a laptop not recalled by Dell. But “Sony screwed up their batteries” is always a better excuse than “We don’t know how to make our product.”

Dell Battery Recall May Not Be The Answer [Consumer Affairs]