After Dell and Apple, Toshiba is now too issueing a massive recall of Sony-made laptop batteries. The batteries, used in Dynabook and Dynabook Satellite laptops manufactured between March and May this year, could fail on the road because of problems with storing and transmitting power, Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori said. The total of recalled Sony batteries is now about 6.5 million. Even airlines have prohibited the use of Dell and Apple laptops in-flight.
It seems that everybody using Sony’s batteries are recalling them … but not Sony.
The bit about airlines is troublesome – because I’m willing to bet they’re doing it to ALL models, even older ones completely uneffected by this… Airport security isn’t smart enough to kniow the difference – and that’s the TRULY scary part of the whole thing.
Just FYI there are a lot of devices that use batteries made by SONY.. I replaced the battery of a Palm M515.. guess that ? the old (original) battery had a “SONY” label on it…
Edited 2006-09-19 11:32
I thought the danger of fire is when the batteries are connected to the charger being charged. On an airplane, I don’t think that is possible. Maybe first class, but I wouldn’t know about that.
Fire danger with batteries can happen during charging and/or discharging.
While I don’t advise you to try this, have you ever purposely shorted the terminals of a 9 volt battery? It will get hot rather quickly. Probably not hot enough to start a fire. But, hot enough to get your attention.
As I understand the Sony battery situation, their batteries can short, internally. Those batteries store a considerable amount of energy compared to the 9 volt example above.
Your risk of fire with an internally shorted battery is a very real possibility and I can understand the airlines reasoning for banning the use of affected laptops until the problem is resolved.
I actually make 9v batteries (well run a machine that makes them) and they can catch fire quite easily, and not very easy to put out, and add in the fact that many laptop batteries use lithium,, the soft metal is very very reactive to water, and many materials used commonly in fires are rendered useless, unless you have so much of it that you can completely smother it. and the normal deactivation barrier most batteries (such as a 9v’s wall of wax/anything that would melt and seal off a shorted battery) have, cannot be used as heavily in a laptop battery because of size concerns, (think shiek before safety) so I am with you on that, ive delt with enough fires at work, I dont want to deal with them when im on an airplane, kudos to airliners for taking action.
I used to be a dedicated fan of their products.
But for easily the past 8 years, everything I bought that had a SONY badge has broken within 12 months of usage.
This includes: digital camera, 2 different VCR’s, a plasma TV, a flat screen TV, 2 different CD players, and a cordless phone…all of them, broken within 1 year.
Good initial quality and features. But the products grenade too early.
There was a time when their stuff lasted for seemingly forever. I had a SONY WEGA TV that busted in less than 12 months.
Contrast that with my sister’s SONY TV, which has been running like a champ since 1984.
The SONY of today ain’t the company I admired so much 20 years ago.
And let’s not even get into the whole rootkit fiasco.
Edited 2006-09-19 20:08