Monthly Archives: August 2006

Batteries that Explode

Yipes! your laptop is a ticking time bomb waiting to burst in flames – cooking processors and data into a fine
stew of smelly electronic parts. Get out the marshmallows!
In the last couple weeks Dell and Apple have ordered enormous recalls of laptop batteries and the news media again fails to
zero in on the real culprit- Sony. I wonder if Sony is recalling their laptop batteries too….this is somewhere around 6 MILLION
batteries recalled- and I wonder if there will be damages for Sony. I’m trying to get a handle on what the issue really is:
faulty wiring outside the batteries (drawing power the wrong way?) or some internal engineering mistake on Sony’s part.
It remains to be seen if other manufacturers will do similar recalls (I think many OEM Sony batteries are Sony products).
Dell seems to have taken much prodding to do this- reports started popping up in June about the “burst into Flame” effect and it wasn’t
until the Dell bar-b-que videos on Youtube that provoked a large scale recall. Apple- who sometimes needs a class action
lawsuit to get a recall program under way – does the right thing by offering a replacement program right away. People have been
complaining about the heat these laptops produce for years- so I wonder if there’s a tolerance issue going on- we all know how hot
some of these laptops get.
Quantas Airlines is even telling folks to remove their batteries and use power while in flight.
Tee- fricking- hee.
yet can we trust these folks to thoroughly test products before they bring them to market? Maybe time to produce new ways to power laptops (and everything else in the world). A crank shaft on a laptop may not be just for the $100.00 Third World model.