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Dell, Sony Discussed Battery Problem 10 Months Ago
InfoWorldMike writes "Dell and Sony knew about and discussed manufacturing problems with Sony-made Lithium-Ion batteries as long as ten months ago, but held off on issuing a recall until those flaws were clearly linked to catastrophic failures causing those batteries to catch fire, a Sony Electronics spokesman said Friday. Spokesman Rick Clancy said the companies had conversations in October 2005 and again in February 2006. As a result of those conversations, Sony made changes to its manufacturing process to minimize the presence and size of the particles in its batteries. However, the company did not recall batteries that it thought might contain the particles because it wasn't clear that they were dangerous, Clancy said. Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden declined to comment on the conversations with Sony in October and February, but told InfoWorld that Dell was 'confident that the manufacturing process at Sony has been changed to address this issue. Now our focus is erring on the side of caution to ensure no more incidents occur.'"
but the laptop with the response plan on it burst into flames.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Furthermore, I don't think they were talking about just malfunctioning of the batch of batteries, because I guess general malfunctioning was not an issue with these batteries. Otherwise the batteries that exploded would have already been returned to Dell before they could even get the chance to explode. Or where these all brand new batteries that exploded? And how many stories are there about malfunctioning batteries on Dells, except for the exploding ones?
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
When it comes to electronics, I have been one of the people holding SONY in very hight esteem. But the behavior of the company with its music, and problems with quality in its devices, have dented my approval. What is going on at SONY? Now there is this battery thing...I think it's time to look at other players in the business. SAMSUNG to me, looks very promising. No wonder SONY's market share has been diminishing since the early 90s.
Was it that hard to find a direct cause for this? I would have imagined they would create a stress test to replicate these real-life situations in whitch the labtops caught on fire.
A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Dell - The best Bang for your buck !!
So what exactly is the story?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
perhaps for a terrorist bomb in the form a laptop battery, so that they can hide their mishandling
of issue for 10 whole months.
Thank god terrorists are not /.ers :p
-- "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" - TAE --
My company made the decision to dump Dell just before this latest fiasco broke. Between regular failures of wireless modules in the D600 laptops, having to replace the motherboards of every one of GX270 desktops (OK, not really Dell's fault that one, but it's their badge up front for management to see) and totally abysmal support we've had enough. From their recent earning reports, I guess we're not alone in that.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
IANAL, and I'm really curious about this: How much evidence would be necessary to convict them on something akin to endangering the public by releasing notebooks that they knew could combust in a literal fireball?
I'm really hoping there is at least some legal protocol to protect consumer's from things like this that are rushed out the door at the (potential) expense of people's lives, other than class action suits.
I suppose SONY and Dell either forgot all the lawsuits in the 60s and 70s stemming from TV sets burning down houses or they just didn't think the same kind of thing could happen to them. They will pay a hefty price.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Are we sure that these explosions aren't caused by a new rootkit installed by infected Sony batteries? They detonate when detected.
"Let's not do anything untill people realise it could kill them.... KACHING!"
God Be Gone
A new laptop built by my company is turned on during a plane flight and used to edit documents. The laptop battery explodes. The plane crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside.
Now, should we initiate a recall?
Take the number of laptops in the field (A) multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B) then multiply the result by the average out of court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of the recall, we don't do one.
Why on Earth would you hold Sony products in high esteem? I could understand that thinking back in the 1980s... but since the 90s came Sony has always had poor-quality problems except in their professional gear. There's nothing "high-end" or quality about them.
Personally I think it's because they've stopped manufacturing their things in Japan. Now it's all about Malaysia or Indonesia or Taiwan or China or something.
Check where things are manufactured, it can tell you a lot about what level quality to expect. Different countries have different cultures and different governments and different labor laws and quality assurance programs and work ethics and wages, etc.
Then again I also can't believe you're starting to think Samsung is looking good. They've improved a lot, thanks to improvements in South Korea itself, but they're still kind of crap and have a long way to go. South Korea used to be one of the WORST countries in as far as quality manufacturing goes, but they've done a lot in the past 5 years or so to try and fix things.
You have to wonder what they thought might be causing the few laptops that did ignite to go up in smoke.. On the one hand, you have charred batteries, which you know have a huge energy density and caustic, chain-reaction, chemistry.
And on the other? Pixie dust? Maybe the numlock-indicator-led was the supposed root cause of exploding, erm, batteries rather than the batteries themselves?
I'd love to hear their theories..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Airliners could start carrying good-sized, insulated, tightly-sealing bags that a flaming laptop could be tossed into and sealed. Haven't heard that the battery fires produce their own oxygen, so the fire oughta be extinguished once the O2 in the bag is used up. Then the whole thing can be disposed of like a flight-sickness bag... (and yes, I've heard of halfbakery.com)
for six years, and the one thing you, as a consumer, have to know about Dell (and possibly companies like it) is that there are two forces that drive their decisions: money and litigation. Dell has cut cost to the bone, not just in their supply chain but throughout their enterprise. Every dime is scrutinized, every step planned to the Nth to determine if the cost / benefit hits a sweet spot. The main driver behind product launches is schedule, and not quality. With the right schedule, Dell can be to the market at a price that makes profit.
If there are problems with the equipment, those problems are weighed against the overall cost they contain. If Dell determined that their notebooks blew up, they'd have to weigh the odds, the cost of litigation, and the cost of bad press versus the cost of fixing the problem.
The only bad thing about this way of thinking from a business perspective is that economy overrides lesson learned. Dell has had battery recalls more than a few times in the past, and this latest may cement the idea with people that Dell = exploding batteries. But rather than proactively develop test plans and more rigorous standards for their suppliers, they simply look at the bottom line.
Ultimately this has served them well from a cash perspective, but this past year has seen a lot of their karma catch up with them; their process (which is King at Dell) has run out of wiggle room for cost cutting, and bad press like this (combined with the cost to replace those batteries) may start to chip away at their altar of the almighty dollar.
You'd be amazed, though, how myopic quarter to quarter thinking makes a corporation.
Actually being one of Dell's employee's, I'm pretty glad we're doing the recall and doing it with a proper easy to use setup. It takes awhile to setup the recall process cause it has to actually be outsourced to a special company that creates the websites, handles the logistics etc. You can't just announce recalling 4.1 million batteries overnight without a plan. Ontop of that I do have to give abit of hats off to my employers since these batteries are in like a shite-load of other companies products, but Dell's the only one who's doing anything at all recall wise. Btw, does anyone remember a story about coating capacitors on the inside with carbon nano-tubes to increase surface area and have a sorta super batter...wtf happened to that idea (Please tell me those don't blow up too, I'm already annoyed enough with lithium ion technology since I have to feild some of these calls)?
Maybe they thought they could avoid the recall by using the Sony backdoor to disable the defective batteries. :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
Sony discussed with Dell if it was possible to get rootkit onto the system via the battery.
A fire extinguisher would be much more fun. Neither would likely be effective.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Wow. Sony just keeps digging and digging and digging....
Sony clearly has the best interests of the end-user in mind.
Not.
Apparently the root kit was only the inflamed skin over the pustule.
Lance that boil and get rid of it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Seriously, anybody watching from the boardroom? It is almost like they are starting to collapse under their own weight.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I have a Dell notebook with a Sony lithium ion battery that I bought in 2004. Apparently, it's not part of the recall. Should I be concerned?
I smell another case of the innocent party being thrown into the fire.... poor, poor, multibillion-dollar Dell&Sony
Not by safety concerns, that is for sure. For marketing concerns, perhaps.
Just think about it: From an economic point of view, would anyone in their right mind invest $400,000,000 to prevent a couple dozen small fires? Absolutely not.
This recall is a tremendous waste of money brought about by the ridiculous American tort system.
Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
I have been working with such battery for over a year now and i am not worried. Under normal working conditions the battery i have seems to be working normally. The battery doesn't get very hot at all. My guess is that something abnormal happend, like an short, on the battery to make it burn.
Those pictures on the internet look pretty heavy. I would be more worried of the hard drive than the rest of the system. Most batteries have been sold to companies.
Dell should have made an script like above available to every big company they deal with. Also they should have been contacted before the story broke on the internet.