Interesting story CleverCowboy.
I remember my father in law at the time, lived in Atlanta where they have numerous thunderstorms. He had a very capable surge suppressor on the power line to his computer, but not to the telephone line I believe it was at the time and a lightning strike nearby, fried his computer.
Many years ago, again my at the time father in law gave us a laptop he had used for years. The battery lost it's ability to hold a charge but we were still able to get quite a bit of use out of it with it plugged in. One day we noticed a burning smell coming from it and found out part of it where the battery was had melted. I guess what happened is the state of the battery kept deteriorating to the point where it was short circuiting the charging circuit. But luckily we noticed it in time and we took the battery out and were still able to get a lot of use out of it. But I wonder what would've happened if we had been away when this happened.
Could it have started a fire? I don't think so, but I have an old laptop that I keep my DC hub files on and the battery in it has lost it's ability to hold a charge and the laptop won't power up without it, so I have to leave it in to power it up and it is because of that incident years ago that I'm reluctant to leave it running if I'm not home.
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