On Feb 2, 7:58 am, "Eisboch" wrote:
wrote in message

ups.com...



Not a cigar - believe it or not, the power supply must have had
a thermal runaway or something similar.

It was more messy than dangerous, but the office filled up with
smoke - needed a new desk, had to have everything cleaned,
etc.

Interesting experience.

That sucks. Laptop or tower?
I leave my laptop on 24/7 and have often thought that maybe that's not a
good idea.

Glad it wasn't more serious.

It was a tower with a 400 watt power supply. I don't really know what
happened, but it definetly started near the power supply. There
really
wasn't a fire as such - the computer caught, but it didn't go further
than
that other than a lot of smoke.

The dogs actually alerted me to it. I was in the living room
watching
BSG from the DVR on the HD TV when Skye and Skippy starting sniffing
and sneezing - then Skye ran down the hall and started barking at the
office
door - then I smelled it. I ran downstairs, killed the power to that
side of the
house, grabbed the fire bottle and opened the door after checking to
see if
it was hot. Smoke everywhere - discretion the better part of valor I
called
911. Got the dogs out of the house, secured the cats in their carry-
all
and waited. Fortunately, no serious fire damage and no water damage
because they used dry extinguisher.

I am on the side of shutting them down - I've seen some research about
this and it doesn't seem to make a difference in terms of power
consumption
or reliability. On the other hand, I've seen other wise.

Personal choice I guess.