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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. "
Really, I'm sorry that your profits - that you earned so hard by putting out piles of junk - now get eaten into by recalling said junk.
Who came up with the idea anyway, that products must not harm the customer? Sheesh, won't somebody think of the profits!
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
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.
Root Kit, PS3 price vs features, Blu Ray delays and cost, Battery recall, pretty much every comment from ken regarding the PS3. You can only go up from here right?
...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?
Whatever else you can say about Sony, their hardware is typically top notch (and almost always crippled by their software). If they're letting quality slide on the manufacturing side then they're in danger of losing their one remaining ace, the perception that "Sony makes good shit".
I'm talking about the average consumer who's unaware of rootkits, sonicstage or ejecting MMORPG users into space.
After having read all of the coverage here on Slashdot, I'm confident Sony will make this up with the overwhelming future success of the PS3.
Last year, Toyota (yes, Toyota) recalled about 2 million vehicles in the USA. (Contrast that number to the 200,000 vehicles recalled by Honda.) Simultaneously Toyota has grown to become the #2 automobile company in the USA, surpassing Ford.
We already know about GM and Ford. Since achieving domination of the global market in the 1970s, these companies produced shoddy products for 15 years. By the time that they corrected course, they had already lost substantial market share.
Now, Sony joins Toyota, Ford, and GM.
side note
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Apparently, Panasonic will now replace Sony as "the consumer electronics giant for the masses". I never could understand why a Sony VCR (in the 1990s) cost $100 more than an identically equipped Panasonic VCR. By the 1990s, Sony had already outsourced production to Southeast Asia, but Panasonic continued to advertise -- actually, brag -- that its VCRs were still designed and built in Japan. I even saw an sticker (on the VCR at Fry's Electronics) proclaiming something like "Still Made with Quality in Japan".
Did Sony supply Apple with their crappy batteries, too?
strongbad says, "hey, my laptop asplode!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Sony. http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/08/24/ap2 972235.html
New punctuation update "~" (no quotes) at the end of a line to indicate sarcasm. ~
Really, I'm sorry that your profits - that you earned so hard by putting out piles of junk - now get eaten into by recalling said junk.
It all started to go downhill after Akio Morita died. The way I saw it his influence kept Sony's focus on high quality, innovative products. After his passing Sony became more interested in profitability over quality. The stories of Sony products not being up to snuff are no legion. Too bad. They had one of the best names, because of the reputation and now they're wrecking it over profits and rushing things to market before adequate testing.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, i personally havn't had any problems with the sony battery in my laptdjsaDASDJAShd NO CARRIER
He didn't take over as CEO till March 2005 which was after some of these batteries were already manufactured. Also, you seem to contradict yourself by saying "British born" and "First US-born CEO". I'm assuming you mean "foreign born" which if you do, you are wrong. Carlos Ghosn is the CEO of Nissan and has been crucial in turning that company around.
Monstar L
Sony's been having one-month lows every single month?!?! Sell!!!
Lenovo claims that their batteries are safe. They are, however, made by Sony.
A Lithium Ion cell is typically about as big as your first finger, give or take, both in length and diameter. Unless Sony Ericsson is still building brick phones, it's safe to say that they don't use Lithium ion cells. :-)
More to the point, Sony Ericsson phones use Lithium Polymer cells, which to my knowledge have not been recalled. It's a similar technology, but they are not the same, and a failure/recall in one does not necessarily imply a need to recall the other or vice-versa.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Just in case you were serious: A "one month low" isn't a "once a month low". It is "the lowest it has been in the past month". That needn't happen once a month -- if the stock is rising it will happen rarely, if the stock is falling it will happen often.
If Sony keeps stepping on their dicks with golf shoes, pretty soon they won't be able to screw their customers anymore.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Sony also made the recalled Mac batteries...
4 1117245005 081604956
e xchange/.
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2006082
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2006082
Affected ranges of serial number prefixes are as follows:
12-inch iBook G4, battery model: A1061
ZZ338 through ZZ427
3K429 through 3K611
6C510 through 6C626
12-inch PowerBook G4, battery model: A1079
ZZ411 through ZZ427
3K428 through 3K611
15-inch PowerBook G4, battery models: A1078 and A1148
3K425 through 3K601
6N530 through 6N551
6N601
To see if your PowerBook or iBook is affected, visit
https://support.apple.com/ibook_powerbook/battery
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Yeah, he's British born in that first sentence, but he continues "to becoming the first US born CEO of a major Japanese firm." That's kind of an impressive feat.
Safety is not a matter of "It is not important because it happened to someone far away." The potential loss from lawsuits is far greater than the cost of a battery recall, especially since there is a picture or video of a laptop burning.
Also, I have repaired the power connector inside three laptops of different brands during the past year, and this is from a group of 15 student's machines, a failure of about 1 in 3, and one of them charred the PC board it was soldered to. Luckily, there was no fire. This cylindrical power jack sells for 35 cents to 75 cents. I wonder if the power designers on Laptops just do not pay attention to the quality of the components they specify. I find it hard to believe that there are not thousands of laptops requiring replacement because of broken connectors.
>My Jaguar was a beautiful car, but had the most bizarre set of problems I've ever heard of (a door and sunroof that opened only when they were in the right mood, occasionally working headlights, etc.)
I don't know much about the newer models, but this sort of thing is considered normal behavior for British cars of the 50s,60s, and 70s. The proper mental attitude to take is to look on it a charming quirkiness when your headlamps go out at night in a driving rainstorm. Of course, you are already used to the fact that the wipers work beautifully until it starts raining, when they quit. This attitude keeps you from shooting holes in the engine block and setting the thing on fire.
It used to be an article of faith among my fellow Triumph, MG, Austin-Healy and Jaguar drivrers that Lucas electrical systems were designed by Satan. Anything electrical worked on a purely random schedule, perhaps, as you suspect, influenced by the moon. On the bright side, major FUBAR situations could often be remedied by a nice wash and wax or rotating the tires.
I always thought that the British engineers' idea was that their cars were supposed to be fun, but unpredictable. I you wanted dependable transportation, you were supposed to take the train.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.