The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and three major notebook manufacturers have announced a recall of about 35,000 notebook batteries (100,000 worldwide) with Sony-manufactured batteries.
Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba have already issued recalls for the batteries that were used in their products and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said "consumers should stop using recalled products immediately."
The recall followed at least 19 reports of the batteries overheating, including 17 reports of the batteries sparking fires, according to the CPSC. Ten of the fires resulted in minor property damage, and at least two people suffered minor burns. The defective batteries are powered by multiple 2.15Ah lithium-ion cells, and were manufactured between October 2004 and June 2005.
HP said it is recalling batteries that have a barcode label beginning with A0, L0, L1 or GC that were shipped with HP Pavilion dv1000, dv8000 and zd8000 models; with Compaq Presario v2000 and v2400 machines and with HP Compaq nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230, nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120 and nx9600 computers.
Toshiba recalls about 3000 Satellite A-, P- and M-series as well as Tecra A and S models. Dell's affected notebooks are the Latitude, model 110L, and Inspiron, models 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, and 5160.
The CPSC is advising people to remove recalled batteries from their notebooks immediately and request a free replacement from the computer manufacturer. |
