Sony batteries explode again

MAKER OF EXPLODING BATTERIES, Sony has been at it again and forced another product recall.

Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Toshiba are recalling 100,000 laptop battery packs made by Sony after 40 reports of overheating.

According to a US Consumer Product Safety Commission notice, the voluntary recall applies to certain Sony 2.15Ah lithium-ion cell batteries made in Japan.

The batteries found themselves in flaming laptops all over the world. Sometimes there is smoke, other times flames. In 21 cases there were minor property damage and there were reports of small burns.

Sony blamed two factors for the defects. The first was that there were adjustments on its manufacturing line from October 2004 to June 2005 which may have affected the quality of cells in certain production lots. The metal foil for the electrodes might also be to blame.

Batteries made after 2006 have not been effected. Sony wishes to point out that the recalled units are a drop in the bucket when it comes to the more than 260 million it has shipped over six years which have not caught fire.

Well if you take out the 10 million exploding batteries made in 2006 and 2007, which affected almost every major PC manufacturer, including Dell and Apple.

However the bulk of the 35,000 affected computers in the US were sold by HP between December 2004 and June 2006.

If you own an HP Pavilion, HP Compaq or Compaq Presario, you might want to call the bomb disposal squad or avoid plugging it in until you can get a new battery.

Some Dell Latitude and Inspiron models shipped between November 2004 and November 2005 are also covered by the recall, as well as some Toshiba Satellite and Tecra laptops sold from April 2005 to October 2005.

Oddly Sony said its own Vaio laptops don't use the battery in question. This will be a great relief to punters who probably have just got their Vaio’s back following the recall of 440,000 Vaio notebooks worldwide because of a wiring flaw that can cause overheating. µ

L'Inq
AP