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The now-famous footage of a Dell computer exploding in front of attendees at a Japanese conference has led to the revelation of many more overheating units causing the computer maker problems for a period of years.

It is extremely likely that the term "laptop" will no longer be used in association with any portable computer from now on. The Osaka incident our Doug Caverly mentioned in late June served as a broad brushstroke of white-out over that name.

The Incredible Exploding Laptop of Osaka could be the culmination of incidents stretching back years. A CRN report followed up last year's Dell recall of 22,000 notebook (definitely not laptop) computers for overheating problems with the revelation that overheating had been an issue for numerous notebooks, over a period of at least a couple of years.

CRN writer Edward Moltzen detailed evidence revealed by a source close to Dell about those incidents. That evidence included photographs detailing where overheating had taken place. On many machines, black charring around the Ethernet port could be seen. Others had melting around the cooling fan, and still more had areas melted and burned away over and around the battery.

Ouch. A painful prospect, and a chilling one to consider. What if the Incredible Exploding Laptop of Osaka had detonated on a flight into or out of Kansai International?

Dell isn't talking about the notebook issue, CRN said. However, Dell is working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to find out just why the Osaka machine exploded as it did.

The company has sold millions of notebooks worldwide, and a small number of defective ones should be put into perspective, Dell's spokesperson said in the report. That is a fair point, but if that one in a million happens to someone, that person will have a much different perspective too.

I use an older model Dell Inspiron regularly, and it does run hot. Until I downloaded a utility that gave me better control of the cooling fan, I had problems with it overheating and shutting down. The notebook (and I assure you, most definitely and explicitly not now or ever a laptop) will hit a high temperature of 168 degrees F. with heavy CPU usage; generally it averages 140 degrees F.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.