A Leicestershire family was this left in shock after their Dell laptop exploded "like fireworks" and set light to their living room furniture, it was reported this week - just before news broke of Sony's decision to appoint a battery safety officer.

According to a story in the Leicester Mercury, the Allen family of Eskdale Road, Hinckley witnessed the spontaneous combustion of their laptop on 25 July.

The notebook, a Dell Latitude C600, was left alone in the family home to load a game. When the Allens came in to see how it was doing, the machine blew up.

"There are six batteries inside a compartment, and they were shooting out like fireworks, like rockets," Shaun Allen, 39, told the paper. "They even bounced off the ceiling, they went up that high."

The exploding batteries set fire to the sofa and the carpet, the paper reports.

Curiously, the computer had not been bought from Dell but from an unnamed shop in Coventry a year ago. Mr Allen said he paid £500 for the machine. Dell told the paper it believes the battery that burned was not one supplied by the company, but a third-party product. However, it said it would give the Allen's a new machine as a gesture of goodwill.

Last month, Dell formally requested 4.1m customers around the world return batteries shipped with its notebooks sold between 1 April 2004 and 18 July 2006. The recalled lithium-ion batteries were made by Sony, Dell said. A week later, Apple also insituted a recall of batteries manufactured by Sony.

Separately, the Japanese giant today said it was appoint the head of its TV division, Makoto Kogure, to take charge of the company's product quality and safety assurance efforts, a role that will oversee firm's battery manufacturing. However, the company was keen to stress the move was not solely the result of the Dell and Apple recalls. ®

Thanks to Reg Hardware reader Paul Kennedy for the tip

Related stories

• Exploding iPod backfires on Apple (3 August 2009)

  https://www.theregister.com/2009/08/03/apple_ipod_explode_silence/

• Acer recalls potentially overheating Predators (20 March 2009)

  https://www.theregister.com/2009/03/20/acer_predator_recall/

• Exploding mobile battery kills Chinese welder (4 July 2007)

  https://www.theregister.com/2007/07/04/exploding_mobile/

• Laptop overheats, vapourises Brazil... almost (11 May 2007)

  https://www.theregister.com/2007/05/11/white_hot_compaq/

• Acer recalls 27,000 Sony laptop batteries (26 April 2007)

  https://www.theregister.com/2007/04/26/acer_recalls_27k_batteries/

• Only you can prevent airline battery fires (23 March 2007)

  https://www.theregister.com/2007/03/23/airline_battery_safety/

• US man badly burned by self-combusting cell phone (16 January 2007)

  https://www.theregister.com/2007/01/16/mobile_phone_fire/

• Dell accused of selling defective notebooks - again (12 January 2007)

  https://www.theregister.com/2007/01/12/inspiron_defect_lawsuit/

• Panasonic pitches 'safe' lithium-ion laptop battery (18 December 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/12/18/panasonic_pitches_safe_li-ions/

• NEC recalls fire-risk desktop PCs (18 December 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/12/18/nec_desktop_pc_recall/

• Sony says battery burn-out probe should have been quicker (4 December 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/12/04/sony_battery_confession/

• Sharp asks laptop owners to return 28,000 batteries (16 October 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/10/16/sharp_battery_recall/

• Hitachi recalls Sony laptop batteries (6 October 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/10/06/hitachi_battery_recall/

• Man saves laptop from battery blaze (25 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/25/man_saves_laptop/

• Sony probes Los Angeles Airport laptop blaze (25 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/25/sony_probes_lax_laptop_fire/

• Virgin eases in-flight Apple, Dell laptop battery limits (22 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/22/virgin_eases_apple_dell_battery_rules/

• Yahoo! guest's Dell laptop goes up in smoke (21 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/21/burning_laptop_epidemic/

• Toshiba recalls 340,000 Sony-made batteries (19 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/19/toshiba_notebook_battery_recall/

• Virgin tells travellers to remove Apple, Dell laptop batteries (14 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/14/virgin_apple_dell_battery_ban/

• Canon to recall personal copiers (13 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/13/canon_copiers_smoke/

• Dell 4 EMC 4 eva? (13 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/13/dell_emc_rollins/

• Korean airline says no to Apple, Dell laptops (13 September 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/09/13/korean_air_bans_apple_dell_batteries/

• Japan tells Apple to probe burning battery problem (30 August 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/08/30/japan_apple_battery_probe/

• 'Hindenbook' returns to burn Apple users (24 August 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/08/24/apple_battery_recall/

• Qantas clamps down on fire-breathing Dells (23 August 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/08/23/qantas_dell_measures/

• 'Zippo' battery recall could cost Sony $430m and a truck (16 August 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/08/16/sony_recall_cost/

• Dell recalls 4.1m laptop batteries (14 August 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/08/14/dell_laptop_recall/

• Two more laptops light up (3 August 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/08/03/more_laptops_burn/

• Dell laptop smoked in Singapore (31 July 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/07/31/dell_laptop_burned_in_sinagpore/

• Dell laptop goes up in smoke (28 July 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/07/28/another_dell_laptop_burns/

• Dell said to have 'dozens' of burned laptop incidents on file (21 July 2006)

  https://www.theregister.com/2006/07/21/overheating_laptops/