zoogies writes "The New York Times is reporting that Dell is now issuing a laptop battery recall — for notebooks sold between April 2004 and July 18, 2006. According to the article, 'The recalled batteries were used in 2.7 million computers sold in the United States and 1.4 million sold overseas. The total is about 18 percent of Dell's notebook production during the period in question.' This seems to go along with a June Slashdot story on an exploding Dell laptop, and a July Slashdot story on a Dell investigation into its exploding laptops. Curiously, there is nothing yet on Dell Support's product recall page about this latest recall."
Dell can't be behind the times. Why, it seems like only yesterday they announced: "Don't pour explosive liquids on your laptop while in flight, our batteries are bad enough as is. Praise be to Allah." Although I'm not sure what they meant.
Actually, Apple is involved just as much as Dell is. The same division of Sony that manufactured these batteries for Dell also produced many batteries for Apple laptops. Although the issue has already been brought up to Apple, they haven't said whether or not they're going to recall as well, merely saying that they would "look into" the issue.
Good point. Of course Apple's had two previous battery recalls (not including the Macbook Pro non-flamey death ones)... and Dell's had one before this recently, IIRC. You just can't get good battery support these days.;)
Apple will recall batteries if they need to... I mean, they recalled Some Macbook Pro batteries because they sucked... (and posed no danger to life or "jewels" heheh)
It is interesting that Sony's having QC issues in certain segments of their manufacturing of late... perhaps their corner-cut
Sony was the designer and build partner for Apple's original PowerBook 5300 battery, which would have been the first mass-marketed laptop with an L-Ion battery.
Introduced in the fall of 1995, only about 1500 of the powerBook 5300 units had shipped when the battery - again, designed and built by Sony - caught fire in an Apple lab. A separate overheating incident at Apple later that week caused the company to pull all the stops to recall and destroy the Sony L-Ion cells. Customers all received two NiMH batteries as compensation.
Apple's new flagship laptop started life with a misstep because of Sony - who Apple never explicitly named in the press.
What's Sony's problem? Have they figured L-Ion batteries out in the past 11 years? Apparently not. no word on whether UPS is going to seek damages from Sony/Dell for the cargo jet they suspect was lost to an L-Ion fire in February.
YES! another conspiracy involving Sony "exploding" Dells and Apples using batteries many by Sony, when's the last time you heard about an "exploding" VAIO? or even heard of someone using a VAIO. One could claim it's some anti-competition plotting to scare people away from Dells and Macs. And Homeland Security scaring people away from the Lenovo. Something about the Windows flag going from red, green, blue and yellow to red, red, red and red. With Dell, Apple and Lenovo out of the way all people will have to
On somewhere news in England, Dell Laptops are now banned on airplanes. Actually you can bring your Dell laptop on the plane but the battery is NOT allowed!!! (Can't edit my own comment!)
Well, from the summary, that would be about 4 million units in roughly two years, and consists of 18% of the total production, which means Dell was selling more than 20 million laptops during that period.
I put my battery's serial number in and it said mine needed to be replaced, so I put in my address and hit 'place order'. It just took me back to the serial number entry page without giving any confirmation. Has anyone else done this with the same results?
That may be, but this paragraph makes me think that it has been updated:
In addition, these batteries may have also been provided in response to service calls. The batteries were shipped to customers between April 1, 2004 and July 18, 2006. The words "DELL" and "Made in Japan" or "Made in China" or "Battery cell made in Japan, Assembled in China" are printed on the back of the batteries. If your battery does not reflect one of these markings it is not part of this recall, and you may exit the site.
At least they're being open about the fact that Sony manufactured these defected batteries. I wonder if other devices using these batteries are going to start exploding as well?
That's the question that I've been wondering the whole time. As we can see Dell doesn't manufacture the batteries so not only was all this crapping on Dell not really fair but you can bet there are a bunch of other companies who use the same stuff. IIRC the batteries in the recall Apple did a few years back were Sony built as well.
Given how many batteries we are talking about here the chances of anyone having thier laptop fail like this are probably the same as having thier laptop getting hit by lightni
Problem is that companies like Apple and Dell probably have contract terms that stipulate a maximum (typical) expected failure rate above which the component manufacturer must cover some or all of the repair costs. While some of these costs will still probably be borne by Dell, odds are Sony will bear the brunt of the costs unless the folks at Dell are asleep at the switch.
If you have Sony stock, now would probably be a good time to sell some of it.:-)
I was joking, but in any case you do have a point.
However, given the amount of money that Sony has, this battery recall won't cost them anything but a few peanutes of their lunch money. Bad PR probably, but still, unless the media decide to put it up as scandal, this kind of thing goes under the Average Joe's radar.
from TFA: The safety agency said the batteries were not unique to Dell, meaning that other companies using Sony batteries may also have to issue recalls. Sony has sold its batteries to most of the major computer makers.
I think that's a yes.
also here [ucdavis.edu] shows that sony batts have been problematic before. I also remember a recall (3+ years ago) for sony camcorders due a battery leakage. One cam apparently caught fire.
The sad thing is, that Sony is probably the best manufacturer of Li-Ions you can buy from. They get so much bad press for their batteries simply because of their market dominance in the battery market. The catastrophic failure rate for batteries from other manufacturers is much higher, it just happens that many of them (such as cheap knockoff cell phone batteries) are not as low profile as exploding Dells, partly due to the reduced size of cell phone batteries.
This large recall will cost them millions. Continued damage to the Dell brand because of laptops aflame would eventually cost hundreds of millions of dollars in reputation. While Dell may have other problems, the battery recall will help them assuage consumer fears about Dell product safety.
Customers should contact Dell to determine if their notebook computer battery is part of this recall. Please visit the firm's Web site at www.dellbatteryprogram.com [dellbatteryprogram.com] beginning at 1 a.m. Central Daylight Time Aug. 15 or call toll-free at 1-866-342-0011, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time. Customers may continue to use the notebook computers safely by turning the system off, ejecting the battery, and using the AC adapter and power cord to power the system until the replacement battery is received. Customers can also write to: Dell Inc., Attn: Battery Recall, 9701 Metric Blvd., Austin, Texas 78758.
Customers may continue to use the notebook computers safely by turning the system off, ejecting the battery, and using the AC adapter and power cord to power the system until the replacement battery is received.
This lets us know that operating on plug-in power without the battery to serve as a filter is a safe and manufacturer approved operating mode for this model of laptop. The machine is not dependent on the battery and can be run for long periods without it.
The poor man's blade. Those Pentium III laptops with 20 gig drives work pretty well for a lot of stuff. DNS, DHCP, Router, etc... But if you are into saving power, get a WRT54G and load DD-WRT or OpenWRT on it. It will do all that stuff also and be a lot cooler and quieter.
Am I the only one who does this, anyway? I mean laptop batteries are ridiculously useless. If you're doing anything on the computer, especially with the DVD drive, they only last an hour or three at most. Besides, it's not like an electrical outlet is all that hard to find. I hear that they're even including standard 120V outlets in a lot of passenger cars now! Getting rid of that useless battery saves tons of weight (not that laptops are heavy these days), but they also save a lot of heat on y
You don't need a new car to get a 120v outlet, stop into any truckstop on a major highway and you can get a little box that will plug into your cigarette lighter and give you a 150-200w 120v outlet (enough for nearly any laptop) and it will only cost you $25 or so. They've been around for years, and can be used for other things, too. Running off your car battery you can watch a couple of DVDs and still have enough juice to start your car with no trouble at all. Rig one up with a big fat deep cycle RV or moto
Dell sold or provided these batteries with the notebook computers, as part of a service replacement, and as individual units from April 1, 2004, through July 18, 2006.
And I thought OMG, Ponies! was over the top. This is crazy.
Two years ago, I was using a Dell laptop running ubuntu linux. I let my small, impalsyed child play a game of Tux Racer. To my horror, the laptop's battery exploded, killing my child to death in front of my eyes.
People say that linux is ready for the desktop, but when is it ready to stop killing children?
the same sony batteries are used by hp and apple too. so do we expect recalls from hp and apple or is it a different issue where the batteries explode on dell laptops only?
The safety agency said the batteries were not unique to Dell, meaning that other companies using Sony batteries may also have to issue recalls. Sony has sold its batteries to most of the major computer makers.
This leads me to wonder if some of the MacBook Pro batteries were made by Sony.
Issues like this are fascinating for what they reveal about people's preconceptions and habits.
On the face of it, it's simply a "large company recalls large number of items after small (relatively) number of incidents" story.
But look at all the Dell, Sony, Apple, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists and wingnuts come out of the woodwork! So much blaming, everyone certain that their already pre-selected villain company is trying to end civilisation as we know it.
Come on, people. This is News for Nerds. It's not News for Mouthbreathers, although sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
Batteries have been causing fires forever. Even the old D-cells you stick in your torch will self-immolate given the right conditions. Think about it. Acid. Metal. Electricity. It's not amazing there are fires, it's amazing there are so few. Laptops have been catching on fire since the very first luggables rolled off the line at Compaq, IBM, etc.
So let's just keep this in perspective. If you want to jump up and down about unsafe products, then go nuts about SUVs. Oh, and don't think that starting your post "I used to like Company X but now..." makes you any more of an intellectual and any less of a wingnut. Just read the numbers again. How many batts recalled? And how many incidents again? Jeez... Move on, nothing to see here...
look at all the Dell, Sony, Apple, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists and wingnuts come out of the woodwork!
Wingnuts like former Dell tech, Robert Day? Did you read the article? You might have caught this little piece:
Although Dell told the agency that only six incidents had occurred, a reporter viewed almost 100 photos of melted notebooks that were returned to the company from 2002 to 2004. The photos, from a Dell database, were supplied by a former Dell technician, Robert Day, who said such damage was more of a common thing than they are letting on. As many as several hundred a year were returned. Mr. Day said, I did see so many pallets of stuff coming in that they had to use my lab for overflow storage.
Did you also catch the little bit about FIVE previous battery fires on airplanes in the last two years? One in a UPS jet destroyed the plane after landing. One had to be chucked out before take off. The other three FAA cases were not so interesting, except for the fact that smoking batteries now placed in cargo holds will take the plane down instead of being contained because the Department of Homeland Security is saving us all from exploding laptops. Do some research on the gruesome details of the ValueJet crash sometime. It was caused by a fire in the cargo hold and people were really outraged at the that someone would put an obvious fire risk down in the cargo.
If you want to jump up and down about unsafe products, then go nuts about SUVs.
That's a good idea too, but it has nothing to do with the issue, which is an obviously flawed product being sold for two years. SUVs do not have such obvious flaws for the most part and when they do, a recall happens.
Perspective is that no one's life is less important than company profits and you will get caught. When there's a clear problem, like hundreds of melted laptops a year, you need to act. The problem is not going to go away until it's fixed. When a third party does something as simple as taking an xray to identify your problem for you, you look very bad.
The story was well researched and things look very bad for both Dell and Sony here. The recall is a good idea but it sounds like it's coming a year late. It will take care of 4.1 million fire hazards.
Do some research on the gruesome details of the ValueJet crash sometime. It was caused by a fire in the cargo hold and people were really outraged at the that someone would put an obvious fire risk down in the cargo.
While I agree with you in principle, they have been negligent here even though they are not the only ones to have these battery problems, but let's still be a little fair to Dell. If I recall correctly the ValuJet Flight 592 crash was due to ValuJet management outsourcing work to a maintenance c
...notebooks sold between April 2004 and July 18, 2006
Even if 99% of people who Dell laptop during that period hears about the recall and actually exchanges their batteries (highly unlikely) there will still be 41000 unsafe Dell laptops out there. Expect to read more about Dell laptops exploding in the months to come...
No wonder they don't want you taking these things on airplanes anymore...
Actually, more importantly, people HAVE been taking these things on airplanes. If the same components could be used to make a bomb, WHY THE HELL were they ever allowed on airplanes in the first place?
Pretty incredible things these are -- all the advantages of Li-poly with none of the stability problems. www.a123systems.com
Right now they are what powers the Dewalt 36V power tools, and you can pick up slightly-overpriced hobbyist assemblies at www.a123racing.com. Valence also makes something similar, perhaps a bit more famous for being in the Segway, called Saphion, but doesn't seem to direct-market them.
OMG DELL IS COPYING APPLE (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OMG DELL IS COPYING APPLE (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Assault and Battery (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/corporate
Given Apple's many battery woes, a recall on their part also seems likely if this is indeed the same battery batch/design.
On the other hand, this is yet another one the conspiracy theorists can blame on Sony (/tinfoilhat on)
Parent
Re:Assault and Battery (Score:2)
You just can't get good battery support these days.
Apple will recall batteries if they need to... I mean, they recalled Some Macbook Pro batteries because they sucked... (and posed no danger to life or "jewels" heheh)
It is interesting that Sony's having QC issues in certain segments of their manufacturing of late... perhaps their corner-cut
Re:Assault and Battery (Score:5, Informative)
build partner for Apple's original PowerBook 5300 battery, which would have been the first mass-marketed laptop with an L-Ion battery.
Introduced in the fall of 1995, only about 1500 of the powerBook 5300 units had
shipped when the battery - again, designed and built by Sony -
caught fire in an Apple lab. A separate overheating incident at
Apple later that week caused the company to pull all the stops to
recall and destroy the Sony L-Ion cells. Customers all received two NiMH
batteries as compensation.
Apple's new flagship laptop started life with a misstep because
of Sony - who Apple never explicitly named in the press.
What's Sony's problem? Have they figured L-Ion batteries out in
the past 11 years? Apparently not. no word on whether UPS is going to seek damages from Sony/Dell for the cargo jet they suspect was lost to an L-Ion fire in February.
Parent
Re:Assault and Battery (Score:3, Insightful)
with
the
poorly-formatted
posts?
Are
people
posting
from
their
cellphones
or
something?
Tip: take care of the paragraphs and let the browsers handle the linebreaks... Thanks.
Re:Assault and Battery (Score:2)
"exploding" Dells and Apples using batteries many by Sony, when's the last time you heard about an "exploding" VAIO? or even heard of someone using a VAIO. One could claim it's some anti-competition plotting to scare people away from Dells and Macs. And Homeland Security scaring people away from the Lenovo. Something about the Windows flag going from red, green, blue and yellow to red, red, red and red. With Dell, Apple and Lenovo out of the way all people will have to
Re:Assault and Battery (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, first they rootkit my laptop, now they want to destroy the evidence.
Just imagine the hilarity that would have ensured had one of their batteries caught fire aboard an airplane.
Re:Dell laptops are now banned on Airplanes (Score:2, Interesting)
Hehe (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hehe (Score:2)
Web site to check your laptop (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Web site to check your laptop (Score:2)
Re:Web site to check your laptop (Score:5, Informative)
(emphasis added)
Parent
No, actually it's new (again) (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Sony Batteries (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sony Batteries (Score:2)
Given how many batteries we are talking about here the chances of anyone having thier laptop fail like this are probably the same as having thier laptop getting hit by lightni
Re:Sony Batteries (Score:2, Informative)
See the comment here:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1940
Re:Sony Batteries (Score:2)
Re:Sony Batteries (Score:4, Informative)
Problem is that companies like Apple and Dell probably have contract terms that stipulate a maximum (typical) expected failure rate above which the component manufacturer must cover some or all of the repair costs. While some of these costs will still probably be borne by Dell, odds are Sony will bear the brunt of the costs unless the folks at Dell are asleep at the switch.
If you have Sony stock, now would probably be a good time to sell some of it. :-)
Parent
Re:Sony Batteries (Score:2)
However, given the amount of money that Sony has, this battery recall won't cost them anything but a few peanutes of their lunch money. Bad PR probably, but still, unless the media decide to put it up as scandal, this kind of thing goes under the Average Joe's radar.
Re:Sony Batteries (Score:2, Informative)
I think that's a yes.
also here [ucdavis.edu] shows that sony batts have been problematic before. I also remember a recall (3+ years ago) for sony camcorders due a battery leakage. One cam apparently caught fire.
Re:Sony Batteries (Score:3, Insightful)
They get so much bad press for their batteries simply because of their market dominance in the battery market. The catastrophic failure rate for batteries from other manufacturers is much higher, it just happens that many of them (such as cheap knockoff cell phone batteries) are not as low profile as exploding Dells, partly due to the reduced size of cell phone batteries.
The simple fact of the matter is that lithium i
Better to recall than to burn (Score:5, Insightful)
How To Check / What To Do (Score:5, Informative)
Customers should contact Dell to determine if their notebook computer battery is part of this recall. Please visit the firm's Web site at www.dellbatteryprogram.com [dellbatteryprogram.com] beginning at 1 a.m. Central Daylight Time Aug. 15 or call toll-free at 1-866-342-0011, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time. Customers may continue to use the notebook computers safely by turning the system off, ejecting the battery, and using the AC adapter and power cord to power the system until the replacement battery is received. Customers can also write to: Dell Inc., Attn: Battery Recall, 9701 Metric Blvd., Austin, Texas 78758.
Interesting information: (Score:2)
This lets us know that operating on plug-in power without the battery to serve as a filter is a safe and manufacturer approved operating mode for this model of laptop. The machine is not dependent on the battery and can be run for long periods without it.
That is good for alternative energy users, th
Re:Interesting information: (Score:2)
Re:How To Check / What To Do (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting rid of that useless battery saves tons of weight (not that laptops are heavy these days), but they also save a lot of heat on y
Re:How To Check / What To Do (Score:3, Informative)
Rig one up with a big fat deep cycle RV or moto
How to check, serial number, and the URL (Score:3, Informative)
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
The bottom or side of the dell battery will have
a serial number in the form of:
JP-111111-22222-333-4444
You should look for the number in the [111111]
section -- e.g.
JP-A1K055-22222-333-4444
April Fools (Score:2)
Prerecall sales pitch (Score:2, Funny)
Tesla Roadster (Score:5, Funny)
Naah, who am I kidding? I'd still give my left kidney for one. Flames are great, maybe we could channel them out the tail like the old Batmobile.
Re:Tesla Roadster (Score:2)
My dell experience (Score:3, Funny)
People say that linux is ready for the desktop, but when is it ready to stop killing children?
from report (Score:4, Interesting)
Another Dell recall??? (Score:2)
2 years ago I recieved notice that there was a recall on my dell laptop's power supply and now the batteries are bad too?
In fact, if I remember correctly I do believe that Slashdot was what tipped me off to the previous recall....
Here is the link
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10
From the Article (Score:4, Interesting)
This leads me to wonder if some of the MacBook Pro batteries were made by Sony.
I Asked the Dell Support Forums (Score:4, Funny)
. . . and a moderator told me to format my C: drive and re-load Windows XP.
</sarcasm>
Seeing what you want to see (Score:4, Insightful)
On the face of it, it's simply a "large company recalls large number of items after small (relatively) number of incidents" story.
But look at all the Dell, Sony, Apple, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists and wingnuts come out of the woodwork! So much blaming, everyone certain that their already pre-selected villain company is trying to end civilisation as we know it.
Come on, people. This is News for Nerds. It's not News for Mouthbreathers, although sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
Batteries have been causing fires forever. Even the old D-cells you stick in your torch will self-immolate given the right conditions. Think about it. Acid. Metal. Electricity. It's not amazing there are fires, it's amazing there are so few. Laptops have been catching on fire since the very first luggables rolled off the line at Compaq, IBM, etc.
So let's just keep this in perspective. If you want to jump up and down about unsafe products, then go nuts about SUVs. Oh, and don't think that starting your post "I used to like Company X but now..." makes you any more of an intellectual and any less of a wingnut. Just read the numbers again. How many batts recalled? And how many incidents again? Jeez... Move on, nothing to see here...
Former Dell tech a Wingnut? (Score:5, Insightful)
look at all the Dell, Sony, Apple, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists and wingnuts come out of the woodwork!
Wingnuts like former Dell tech, Robert Day? Did you read the article? You might have caught this little piece:
Although Dell told the agency that only six incidents had occurred, a reporter viewed almost 100 photos of melted notebooks that were returned to the company from 2002 to 2004. The photos, from a Dell database, were supplied by a former Dell technician, Robert Day, who said such damage was more of a common thing than they are letting on. As many as several hundred a year were returned. Mr. Day said, I did see so many pallets of stuff coming in that they had to use my lab for overflow storage.
Did you also catch the little bit about FIVE previous battery fires on airplanes in the last two years? One in a UPS jet destroyed the plane after landing. One had to be chucked out before take off. The other three FAA cases were not so interesting, except for the fact that smoking batteries now placed in cargo holds will take the plane down instead of being contained because the Department of Homeland Security is saving us all from exploding laptops. Do some research on the gruesome details of the ValueJet crash sometime. It was caused by a fire in the cargo hold and people were really outraged at the that someone would put an obvious fire risk down in the cargo.
If you want to jump up and down about unsafe products, then go nuts about SUVs.
That's a good idea too, but it has nothing to do with the issue, which is an obviously flawed product being sold for two years. SUVs do not have such obvious flaws for the most part and when they do, a recall happens.
Perspective is that no one's life is less important than company profits and you will get caught. When there's a clear problem, like hundreds of melted laptops a year, you need to act. The problem is not going to go away until it's fixed. When a third party does something as simple as taking an xray to identify your problem for you, you look very bad.
The story was well researched and things look very bad for both Dell and Sony here. The recall is a good idea but it sounds like it's coming a year late. It will take care of 4.1 million fire hazards.
Parent
ValuJet Flight 592 (Score:3, Informative)
While I agree with you in principle, they have been negligent here even though they are not the only ones to have these battery problems, but let's still be a little fair to Dell. If I recall correctly the ValuJet Flight 592 crash was due to ValuJet management outsourcing work to a maintenance c
That many? (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if 99% of people who Dell laptop during that period hears about the recall and actually exchanges their batteries (highly unlikely) there will still be 41000 unsafe Dell laptops out there.
Expect to read more about Dell laptops exploding in the months to come...
Web enabled cat... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, so long as it doesn't explode (I haven't heard of any exploding cats), then we will both be happy.
Re:Battery Recall Press Release (Score:2)
Re:Bah (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Dude! (Score:2)
Actually, more importantly, people HAVE been taking these things on airplanes. If the same components could be used to make a bomb, WHY THE HELL were they ever allowed on airplanes in the first place?
Re:Dude! (Score:4, Funny)
Now, why did I first read that as "Dude, you bought a bong!" ?
Soko
Parent
Re:Dude! (Score:4, Funny)
Because you've been hanging around the stoner Dell guy too long?
Parent
Yep, with Li-ion nano phosphate (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now they are what powers the Dewalt 36V power tools, and you can pick up slightly-overpriced hobbyist assemblies at www.a123racing.com. Valence also makes something similar, perhaps a bit more famous for being in the Segway, called Saphion, but doesn't seem to direct-market them.