Maven: Great Dells of Fire

The Business Press Maven has a general rule that has proven as reliable as death, taxes and Tom Cruise making a gruesome spectacle out of himself: Whenever a public relations problem has to do with a product defect and contains the word "flammable," well, the story ain't fated for no one-day ride.

Welcome to the Ford Pinto -- I mean, the Sony(SNE Quote - Cramer on SNE - Stock Picks) battery.

The initial focus of the story wrongly centered on Dell(DELL Quote - Cramer on DELL - Stock Picks) because its computers were the first to go up in smoke (the photo of the guy whose pick-up truck's ammo stash may have exploded thanks to what was inside his Dell was worth a thousand headaches for the company) and the resulting troubles dovetailed neatly with the company's other challenges and recent missteps. (There is a perception that Dell's consumer service has imploded, giving the whole thing some rounding, poetically.)

But the real problem was that Sony battery. Other computers use it as well, so we woke up this morning to the second leg of the exploding-battery saga:

Apple(AAPL Quote - Cramer on AAPL - Stock Picks) is now recalling about 2 million of those lithium-ion incendiary little jobs.

Of course, at least this morning, the media still seem stuck with the initial misperception. Way up high, many of the articles ask the timeless question:

How will this affect the Dells?