Dell is in deep doo-doo

While Dell is among the first to be hit with a heat-based lawsuit -- the "canary in the coal mine," according to one analyst -- it will almost certainly not be the last. The latest laptop and smartphone designs, which pack a plethora of features into small cases, are much more likely to overheat.

Dell is up the creek without a paddle once again. This time the computer maker and tech kingpin has been sued for so-called defects in the design of its Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, and 5160 notebooks. The suit comes on the heels of a hard year for Dell. In 2006, it was a major player in the recall of some four million defective batteries that burned the company's reputation.

The new lawsuit, a class action led by the Ontario law firm of Rochon Genova LLP, claims that Dell has knowingly sold poorly designed motherboards prone to overheat and fail, often after the machines' one-year warranty has expired.

"I do not believe that I should be forced to spend hundreds of dollars to fix the defective motherboard, when Dell should have known about this problem at the time they initially sold the computer," said Thad Griffin, the plaintiff, in a published statement.

Hey, It's Not Just Dell

But heat problems affect far more firms than Dell. Indeed, the mercury is rising as users demand more power for machines that do everything from play movies to plan mergers, sometimes in ways that tax their power systems to the point of breaking.

"It's an issue that refuses to go away, and rightfully so," said Carmi Levy, senior analyst at InfoTech Research Group. "Thermal management and efficient thermal designs -- of all hardware Relevant Products/Services, both mobile and nonmobile -- is as important today as it was yesterday, when the battery issue first broke."

Levy is in a unique position to judge. His firm was the first to warn of defective batteries and the potential fallout, and was called everything from "Chicken Little" to "fearmonger" as a result, said Levy. Only months later, Sony Relevant Products/Services batteries in laptops from Dell, HP Relevant Products/Services, Lenovo, and others grabbed headlines when they began to overheat and even explode.

"This is not just Dell," said Levy. "Certainly every major vendor of mobile hardware is going to watch this lawsuit carefully and they will govern themselves accordingly."

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