Also this week, Dell recalled 4.1 million laptop computer batteries because of a potential fire hazard.

At the media event in Sydney yesterday, Michael Dell said very little about overheating.

He said even less when Computerworld asked about Dell's LAN switches. Customers love the price, but haven't been so enthusiastic about the switches.

Some ugly installation stories have meant too few enterprise customers are making the switch from Cisco to Dell.

Asked how the company planned to address this issue, Dell said he was happy to discuss the company's high-volume business such as servers or storage, but wasn't willing to talk about switches.