RSSDell Recalls 4.1 Million Laptop Batteries
By Ed Oswald | Published August 15, 2006, 12:00 AM
Under a deal negotiated with the U.S. Government's Consumer Product Safety Commission, Dell disclosed plans late Monday to recall nearly 4.1 million batteries. The recall would be the largest ever electronics recall negotiated by the agency, involving laptop batteries shipped between April 1, 2004 and July 18, 2006.
The batteries, made by Sony, have been the subject of increased scrutiny after media reports caught footage of at least two laptops catching fire due to the batteries overheating. The most notable of these was a laptop in Japan that exploded on video during a conference, prompting the company to launch an investigation into the matter.
Dell maintains that the these are isolated occurrences, however it is taking the broad measure as a safety precaution. According to a statement by the company, the batteries appeared in its Latitude, Inspiron, Precision, and XPS lines of notebook computers.
Those with affected machines are being urged to only use the laptops when connected through a power cord. Including problems with Dell, batteries in at least 339 devices from cell phones to laptops have overheated since 2003, causing burns, injuries and property damage, the CPSC reported.
On three previous occasions over the last five years, Dell has had to recall batteries shipped in its laptops. The most recent of these was in December of last year, when the company recalled 35,000 batteries over a risk of overheating. Another large scale recall of 284,000 batteries occurred in 2001.
More information about the recall is available on Dell's Web site.
I get a kick out of all those who have turned this into some wacko platform debate when it is actually a battery technology debate!
I think some need to return to running anti-virus routines at their BestBuy tech support counters.
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|Find it odd Dell Laptops use Sony batteries? Don't! Dell isn't alone:
1. Sony Laptops usually have Hitatchi and Toshiba hard drives.
2. Toshiba Laptops almost exclusively use Sony branded DVD-RW drives, as well as Samsung and Hitatchi hard drives
3. Dell uses mostly ASUS manufactured motherboards, multiple power supply brands including the famous 305Watt HP power supply for most of its Dimension 4700's.
4. HP's "Hewlett-Packard" CD-RW drives were actually made by Panasonic, LGC, and Mats***a.
Those are just a few examples. My point? Every PC brand uses proprietary parts--face it, Dell can't engineer their own batteries. Batteries are a completely different ballgame. Even if they had their name on it, they wouldn't actually be making the batteries. Heck, "Dell" doesn't even make computers--they engineer the design specs and reference sheet, and other people supply the components for them, all dell does is put the stuff together.
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|I saw this in the FatWallet.com Hot Deals. Here's an interesting paragraph:
Even more daunting, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has stated that the batteries were not unique to Dell. This means that other companies using Sony batteries may also be issuing recalls soon. According to the NYT article referenced above, Sony has sold batteries to all the major computer makers, including Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Lenovo and Apple. The upcoming Dell recall alone is the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Compared to this, the DRM snafu seems so trivial now -- I mean, this is people's health and welfare we're talking about.
@wincement: Put me on the anti-Sony side... plzthx.
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|Done.
Anyone else? Where's Mark? I know he's gonna want a say in this. =p
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|His silence is just deafening, isn't it?
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|Not sure what you want me to say. Big deal, Dell don't have the capabilities to make lithium batteries, so buy them in from Sony. Nothing new here. Some batteries are faulty. It's happened before, and will happen again.
Perhaps you just like inciting arguments.
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|heh
...Sony batteries. Do I hear another Sony/anti-Sony flame war coming?
(pun intended)
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|For anyone who is interested.
The following battery models, only, may be subject to recall:
1K055 C5340 D6024 JD616 U5867 X5333
3K590 C5446 D6025 JD617 U5882 X5875
59474 C6269 F2100 KD494 W5915 X5877
6P922 C6270 F5132 M3006 X5308 Y1333
C2603 D2961 GD785 RD857 X5329 Y4500
C5339 D5555 H3191 TD349 X5332 Y5466
To determine whether your battery is affected by this issue:
https://www.dellbatteryp....com/batterymodels.aspx
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|good news is that new dells will come with a crank. If that's not enough they will also be fuled by Sony's ego.
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|I was about to say it'd be a good Renewable Energy, but it'd do more damage to the environment than petrol... think of the Sony s***e everywhere.
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|you're right, sony's ego is too proprietary.
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|I can't bring mine in because it exploded in flames and burned my arms off. Can someone give me a ride? Just kidding. :)
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|my 700m was purchased around that time, but the battery itself is not hot. what's hot it's the laptop itself. i underclock it to keep it cool.
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|I have the same issue with my 600m.
I strongly suggest one of these
http://www.newegg.com/Pr...;minPrice=&maxPrice=
The one I have doesn't seem to be a battery hog, so I'm not complaining.
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|Thanks for sharing this news. We've been purchasing a lot of Dell laptops lately, in spite of all of the haters, because they are a good value. Glad to see Dell stepping up before this becomes an even bigger problem.
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|Where is that "dude your getting a dell" guy now? I think he was berried alive under all those recalled batteries!
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|he will be appearing in commercials with smokey the bear, "dude don't leave your laptops in the forest"
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|After his arrest for marijuana, I suppose his next commercial would be him lighting a joint over a burning laptop. :)
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|How about sticking a link to https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/Default.aspx in the article somewhere?
That might help the many, many people stop from frying their apendages (which would now be their own fault).
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|Thank you! I've seen about a dozen articles about this recall, including a blurb on the news, and this the first time I've been able to actually find a link to the current recall. All my Google hits seem to lead to the last one.
Yup - there's my XPS in the list. No wonder my thighs keep frying when the laptop is in my lap...
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|No wonder my thighs keep frying when the laptop is in my lap...
You put the laptop in your lap? Now that's just silly. Who would do that? It's not like they're made for that. =p
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|"The batteries, made by Sony, have been the subject of increased scrutiny..."
One more reason I remain a loyal Dell consumer. Unlike other manuf\distributors they are at least taking responsibility.
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|"The batteries, made by Sony, have been the subject of increased scrutiny..."
Well, what a surprise, eh?
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|It's about time they start taking the responsibilty of ditching proprietary junk, and building
systems with all standard components. Until that time comes, which is probably never,
aside from this battery issue, Dell shall remain the world's worst PC build company.
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|Congrats DJGM I was waiting for some moron to post useless banter about how they think Dell is the worst manufacturer ever. I can go on with the rest of my day now....you tool.
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|Well, it is true that Dell is made up of a lot of proprietary parts. I just upgraded my RAM, and thanks to a lot of tech support from upgradenation.com, I was finally able to do it. Dell has you buy parts from their web site at inflated prices (the 1 GB sticks I picked up were as low as $60; Dell was selling the same stick for $170). I wish they would use more standard parts, but other than that, Dell is a very decent company. Their tech support is great (got into live chats with them pretty instantly, etc) and their products are really nice. Saying that they're the worst computer company simply because of their proprietary hardware is a joke.
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|sweet. the proof. makes all those posts about dells combusting worth my time......
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|"Save a shopper, don't let them buy a Dell."
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|"The batteries, made by Sony"
Or a Sony product.
Plus, look on the bright side, 4.1 million people get a nice new battery that would have cost them £60 or more.
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|Who says they'll get a new one. They just said they are taking everyones batteries. Now dell ships these batteries in their new machines, and dell makes bank off their 52 week market decline. This is their way of making it back in the game. ;x jk, I know how the game works. I'm just fried because I am subject to one of those who had to have their MB replaced due to power port breaking recently, so I am still ill about that.
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|Heh, I had the same issue.
More impressivley, I managed to get a fly in the screen last year.
And then I found out that it's a 'common' issue.
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