Apple Powerbook and iBook Battery Recall

doubleacr writes "The Register is reporting that Apple is recalling batteries in 12 and 15 inch Powerbook and 12 inch iBooks sold between October 2004 and May 2005. Apple has set up a page with info on model number and serial numbers of batteries affected, and also how to get a replacement."

Comments

affected

[Anonymous Coward]

affected, not effected

Re:From the FAQ

[trampel]

It's not quite that dumb. There are/were notebooks that won't run without a battery installed, maybe due to the design of their power circuitry.

I remember the Powerbook 180, for instance.

Re:Nah

[tehshen]

I don't think you could type so well if the battery explodes and mangles up the keyboard quite badly

Dell

[truesaer]

I had a dell notebook once that had a battery recall. I didn't even know about the recall until one day I found an Airborn Express box on my porch with a new battery and a prepaid box to return the old one. After returning it I promptly got an ADDITIONAL battery and a $30 gift certificate to Dell's website as a thankyou/sorry. I thought that was pretty cool of them, the recall consumed about 2 minutes of my time to seal the battery in the return box, and I got a bunch of free stuff out of it too.

Now I wish I'd abused mine!

[Ben Jackson]

Mine is about 5 months old, but I've been babying the battery. Wish I'd known I'd be getting a freebie! To find out how many cycles your battery already has:

ioreg -l -w 0 | grep Capacity

I only used 22 cycles. :(

Re:Now I wish I'd abused mine!

[busman]

or for the terminal impaired ..

System Profiler -> Hardware -> Power

Battery Information:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4438
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 1262
Amperage (mA): -1726
Voltage (mV): 10921
Cycle Count: 22

Ok, the website has some problems!

[AnObfuscator]

It seems there are some current problems with the website, just be forewarned!

Here's my story:
So, my battery for my PB 12" is in the range as testified on Apple's site. I tried to use the site to have my affected battery registered, but the site kept returning an error that my serial number wasn't recognized. Huh?

So, I call Apple, and the guy says, "your model number is the Powerbook battery #, but the battery's serial number is an iBook battery serial number, so the system is rejecting the battery # as inconsistent with the computer's #." Huh?

So, the guy went off to figure out what to do and put me on hold. For some reason, the hold music turned off, and this voice comes on every 30 seconds to say, "Please wait. Please wait. Please wait. Please wait."

It is very very very obnoxious.

So, they finally try to set up a manual request over the phone, but I have to give them a credit card number (They want to put a hold on it, I guess to keep you from getting a free battery), which is SOP but still annoying, because I don't have a credit card. So I have to call back later with a credit card (grrr) or wait for the website to be fixed (double grrr grrr).

for whatever reason, they *don't* requre the credit card info via the website.

hopefully my experience can be of assistance to one of you out there.

Warning: Don't put water on burning lithium

[Johnboi Waltune]

I have one of these recalled Powerbook batteries, and right now it's running at home unsupervised. Great.

I haven't seen anyone else mention it in this thread, but pouring water on burning lithium is an extremely Bad Idea. You'll get an effect similar to pouring gasoline on burning wood.

Most Slashdotters probably know not to pour water on an electrical fire, but I suspect far fewer know burning lithium can use water for a fuel source.

From a FAQ I found about how to handle a lithium fire (this is a google html version since the original was a .Doc file): "Use a graphite powder or a Lith-X (class D) extinguisher to extinguish burning lithium. Don't use water, sand, carbon tetrachloride, carbon dioxide, or soda acid extinguishers in lithium cell fires."

Re:Sounds like Good Business to Me

[Colol]

And they're taking what must be a pretty big loss just for the sake of having good business integrity.

According to the article over at MacCentral, nope. Apple doesn't expect the cost of performing the recall "to be material to Apple", and LG will be the one ponying up the costs.

Which, given this is the second time in a year LG has caused Apple to issue a recall on batteries, they ought to be doing.

Apple web site totally slammed...

[peter1]

When I went to put my serial numbers in (which are within the qualifying range), it initially came back and told me that I do not qualify. On a second reload of the page (which took forever) it finally admitted that I did qualify, but when I went to register the page never finished loading. A final third attempt and again it claimed that I was out of luck.

Had to end up calling Apple support directly (800-275-2273) who admitted that they are being slammed and all the techs are taking serial numbers to enter at a later time when the servers get quiet again...

Just to save everyone the hassle of trying to get registered on the web site...