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Battery Recalls A Blow to Sony's Recovery
Yasser writes to mention the fallout from yet another Sony battery recall. Sony's stock hit a one-month low today on the news that they'd be pulling over a million batteries off the market. The recall is expected to have little impact financially, but has prompted the Japanese government into ordering Sony to look into the battery problem. From that article: "The ministry instructed the two companies to investigate the safety of Dell models Latitude, Inspiron and Precision and report on their findings by the end of August, the ministry said. Earlier this month, problems with battery cells supplied by Sony forced Dell to recall an unprecedented 4.1 million laptop batteries in the United States. "
What about Thinkpad batteries? Are they safe? Although it doesn't say anywhere on the battery that it's a Sony, it *does* say so in software. I have a Thinkpad T43.
...but, wow, it seems like Sony can't do anything right anymore, and every move they make is scrutinized for its downfalls. I'm not referring only to this Battery Recall. Is this a symptom of slashdot and its heavy skewing? What other sites should I check out to broaden my horizons?
Don't let Sony story fool you, the problem is with Lithium Ion architecture which has always been risky.
o ncerns
There is no way out too, people got used to charging their batteries whenever comes to their minds (no memory effect) , low weight opposed to NiCad batteries. Also lets face the fact that there are complete irresponsible or non educated people against nature who would throw out their chargeable batteries without giving them to service for safe disposal. There is a huge difference between throwing out a Cadmium thing or a Lithium thing to nature. Both should not be done but there is real life issue.
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion#Safety_c
Imitation/low quality batteries has become problem when Lithium Batteries became popular and affordable remember? Wonder why? A low quality, imitation NiCad battery would only have "number of charges" or "more than normal memory effect" problem only. A low quality Li-Ion battery would additionally EXPLODE on consumers face since it is missing very important electronic,chip which shuts down battery if it is overheated.
Read Nokia etc. warnings on imitated batteries.
Not being a Sony apologist here, but really, the batteries are junk?
The Apple recall involved 2 minor injuries in 9 complaints out of 1.8 million batteries. Anyone care to shine a light on any other industry and look for a product this reliable? Toasters, anyone? According to the US Consumer Product Safety website, one toaster model alone resulted in 1066 fires in a product that sold 234,000 units. The batteries in the Apple recall have been in laptops since 2003 - three years with 2 injuries and 9 complaints.
I remember a field service tech from DEC, in to work on our PDP system back in the mid 80's, telling of this service call to a foundry. Something stopped working and they found a the system schematic in the back of a filing cabinet which indicated there was something this company had in there, somewhere which ran everything. It was a PDP-4, running off an 8 inch floppy disk. Years past its installation in a corner of the foundry floor the foundry hand remodelled and put all sorts of structure, vents, wiring, etc around this little box without a thought to anyone ever needing to get to it. The tech found a way in, replaced some part and the thing went right back to work running things in the foundry. A veritable antique by even mid-80's standards, running in an environment with a lot of heat, dust, dirt, etc. Somethings used to just keep going.
I'm not certain of any PC's these days, the quality of motherboards or components. Often they just crap out without so much as bump.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar