Dell notebooks take heat as 4.1 million batteries recalled

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 15 August 2006 09:05

Your IT - Home IT

In another literally explosive issue for number one PC manaufacturer Dell, the company has issued a global recall for more than 4 million notebook computer batteries which are chief suspects in the cause of notebook computers catching fire.

In June, a minor sensation erupted when a Dell notebook spontaneously burst into flames at a conference in Osaka Japan. A photo of the flaming notebook was circulated around the web. Since then, further incidents of flaming Dell notebooks have been reported to the company.

Dell has had more than its share of problems in past months, with just this week consumers in China launching legal action against laptops supplied with the wrong processor chips.

The Dell notebook batteries being recalled are installed in Inspiron, Latitude and Precision models purchased between April 2004 and July 2006. The batteries are made by Sony and are used in other notebook computers including those made by Apple, which earlier this month issued its own battery recall for MacBook Pro computers. However, the Apple recall was reportedly not for heating issues but performance problems.

Batteries have become a source of headaches for a number of notebook manufacturers recently. Number two PC manufacturer Hewlett-Packard has issued three separate battery recalls since October 2005, when it recalled 130,000 Chinese batteries used in HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario notebook computers.