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Unisys booth sends delegates running

Stephen Shankland CNET News.com

Published: 05 Apr 2006 17:25 BST

LinuxWorld has been a hot show in the computing industry, but not usually hot enough to trip fire alarms.

But smoke from a Unisys booth led to a fire alarm at the show that caused some to evacuate from the Boston Convention and Exhibition Centre.

People love to rib Intel for its hot chips and high power consumption these days, but a Unisys representative blamed the mishap on convention centre wiring, pointing out that servers at the show weren't even plugged in. The company's display was up and running 70 minutes after the alarm went off.

Oleg Zhurakousky, a Unisys solutions architect, said in an email that he called the emergency services to prevent a much more serious disruption. "If [a] fire alarm was triggered, then sprinklers would go off, which would put an end to the whole expo," he said.