My wife sent me an email about a fire death thought to have been caused by a laptop computer the decedent was using in bed before he fell asleep. The theory was that the air intake for the cooling fan in the computer was blocked by bedcovers. Snopes could neither confirm nor deny the report so I ran it past a certified fire investigator, Doug Cranford, and our firm’s outside IT guy Barry Langley. Both confirmed that this is a real threat. Doug has seen it before and Barry has seen laptops that melted from being left on the bed.
Takehome message: don’t take your laptop to bed.
