In the good ol' days kids were warned about playing with matches. These days you can add the iBook and other laptops to the list of fire hazards. At least that's what 11-year old Nick Brown experienced.

Last month Nick was playing on his Apple iBook laptop then left it running in his room. Later, his parents heard a popping noise and saw Nick's room filled with smoke. Apparently heat from the laptop had started melting the carpet. The Browns quickly carried it outside where the iBook became a virtual fireball (see video).

"I mean, it was five minutes and (the computer) was in flames," Nick's mom Cindy said. "The computer burst into flames. It doesn't seem real that you would have a fire in a computer. We all could have died, and the house could have burned down."

Although she may have sounded a bit hysterical and needed a slap in the face, she has reasons to fear for their safety. Forty-four reasons. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that laptops caused a fire that burned a two-story apartment complex in Mississippi and a hotel room in MichicaN in 2005. In 2004, the Commission received reports of a laptop fire in a kindergarten room in Houston and severely burned a woman in New York. All in all 43 sizzling incidents were reported in the last two years. Nick Brown's computer was incident no. 44.

In an interview Nick Brown said, "I don't know why it caught fire." No one does. An Apple Computer representative refused to comment on the incident. Ditto for laptop makers Dell and HP for previous incidents involving their products. But the three companies did recall more than 300,000 laptop batteries "due to fire hazards" in 2004 and 2005. If the trend continues, this year's hottest laptop accessory could be a fire extinguisher.