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Yet another case of the few ruining it for the many.  Due to “at least 40” reports of laptop batteries overheating and causing fires as well as potential property damage, Sony is recalling 35,000 Lithium Ion batteries in the US and another 65,000 in other countries.  In a stroke of genius, none of these batteries were actually put in Sony laptops.  Instead, most of them (32,000) are in HP Pavilion dv model and Compaq laptops, and to a lesser extent Toshiba Satellite and Tecra laptops (3,000) and only 150 Dell Latitude and Inspiron laptops.  The batteries were made way back in October 2004 to June 2005.

This isn’t the first time Sony has recalled laptop batteries in recent memory.  As Electronista points out, Sony issued a global recall of batteries in 2006 that affected a lot of different companies and resulted in millions of laptop batteries being recalled.  It does seem to be an issue in the past few years with quite a few video of exploding or fire-catching laptops on YouTube and plenty more individual accounts of such.

With battery tech constantly being pushed as of late, it really isn’t a surprise that some come out with flaws.  It’s at least a good thing that Sony is recalling them and replacing the batteries.  The only questions that remain in my mind are how many people actually send in their batteries for replacement, and how many people are actually still using three- to four-year-old laptops?

Read [Electronista]
Image from [Exploding Laptop]