Dell Issues Laptop Battery Recall 170
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."
Better to recall than to burn (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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...
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.
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 ion batteries are nasty temperamental things and very easy to cause to explode. There's a reason why (to my knowledge) only Li-Ion has the restriction that bare cells may not be sold to anyone other than people licensed to work with Li-Ions in the U.S. (Any place you order "bare cells" from will have a disclaimer stating that the cells are in a pack with protective circuitry of unknown functionality.)
Re:Assault and Battery (Score:3, Insightful)
with
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poorly-formatted
posts?
Are
people
posting
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cellphones
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something?
Tip: take care of the paragraphs and let the browsers handle the linebreaks... Thanks.