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Some Sony batteries recalled

by on31 October 2008

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Blamed for overheating again

Sony is on the hot seat again, literally, and its batteries are being blamed for more than 40 incidents worldwide of laptops overheating. This comes just slightly more than two years after the largest battery recall in the electronics industry in which Sony’s batteries were determined to be the culprit.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Sony announced today that Sony is voluntarily recalling 100,000 notebook battery packs powered by Sony's 2.15Ah lithium ion cells. Of those sold, 35,000 were in the U.S. and 65,000 in international markets. Sony says that since 2002 it has shipped 260 million 2.15Ah lithium ion cell batteries.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission claims that about 32,000 HP notebooks, 3,000 Toshiba notebooks and 150 Dell notebooks are affected. Sony says it began receiving reports of problems with the 2.15Ah batteries in June 2005. Since then, PC manufacturers have received worldwide reports of 40 overheating incidents; some were minor burns to users and minor property damage, where other incidents resulted in dramatic smoke or flames.

Unlike the last battery defect claim in 2006 which caused more than 8 million notebook batteries to be recalled, this time the overheating appears to be limited to some 2.15Ah batteries that were manufactured between October 2004 and June 2005. Sony claims that it has not received any reports of overheating on batteries produced after 2006.

Affected models include the following: HP Pavilion dv1000, dv8000, and zd8000, Compaq Presario v2000 and v2400, and HP Compaq nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230, nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120, nx9600; Toshiba Satellite A70/A75, P30/P5, M30X/M35X, and M50/M55; and Dell Latitude 110L, Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, and 5160. Toshiba, Dell and HP have all established their own Web sites where customers with these battery models can submit a form and get a free replacement battery pack by mail.

Last modified on 31 October 2008
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