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Toshiba to Exchange 340,000 Laptop Batteries
narramissic writes "Toshiba Corp. has offered to exchange 340,000 laptop computer batteries made by Sony. According to a Toshiba spokesman, the batteries may fail to charge correctly, causing the power to cut off suddenly. The company will be posting a software tool to its Web site, allowing customers to identify whether their computer is affected." From the article: "Toshiba's problems stem from a defect in the interface circuitry between the battery cells and the computer. That defect is caused by corrosion, said a spokesman for Sony, the manufacturer of the batteries. An ingredient used in the insulating paper of batteries manufactured between March and May can corrode components in the batteries' charging circuits, causing them to fail, said Sony spokesman Takashia Uehara. The supplier changed the composition of the insulating paper without notice, he said."
Well, I'll tell you ...
Toshiba's free battery exchange program covers 11 notebook models sold in Japan, five sold in the U.S. and 12 sold in Europe, including the Tecra A7, Satellite A100, Satellite M50 and Satellite pro M70
Has Sony had any good news recently?
Funnypics
Have I mentioned lately how *GLAD* I am that I haven't purchased a laptop yet?
:)
This sort of shakedown can only serve to improve the product before I finally pull the trigger and make that purchase
I guess it's a good thing the PS3 won't have a laptop battery in it. Still, I expect some sort of hardware failure to occur a few months after release.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
With literally millions of batteries being recalled from various laptop vendors who all blame it on their supplier(s?), I've yet to see an article which identifies which company has apparently thrown out all QA controls and is just supplying batteries as fast and cheap as it can. What company is responsible for these batteries? I want to short its stock.
if(1) {
printf("Your battery is not affected.\n");
}
else {
printf("Your battery is affected.\n");
}
This is a fairly lucky break for Toshiba - for those who haven't already moved on down the reply-line, let me explain why:
First of all, Toshiba isn't exactly a, how shall we say, 'household name' in the U.S./Western market.
Secondly, you can bet that Toshiba doesn't have to pay for Sony's mistakes - that role typically falls to Sony (or Sony's end-users). Thirdly, there is little the U.S. business news, and to some degree European news world likes to cover more than a big huffy-puffy recall, or RECALL RECALL RECALL!
So for a small name like Toshiba, this equates to free publicity, and goodwill; "Aww- look how well they took care of thier consumers."
from the article:
"Toshiba's free battery exchange program covers 11 notebook models sold in Japan, five sold in the U.S. and 12 sold in Europe, including the Tecra A7, Satellite A100, Satellite M50 and Satellite pro M70, Ohmori said. European customers can consult a list of affected computers on Toshiba's Web site "
So essentially, they are getting free publicity in the U.S. and European markets. (Not that this is a good or bad thing, just and interesting aspect of the situation) Ask someone in a week to name 5 laptop makers, and I'd wager Toshiba moves up the list in recognition. Longterm, (nearly) any press is good press.
Advertising is a poor, failing, ghost of an attempt at the power of honest word of mouth. -Locution Commando
When is Sony going to, you know, recall the batteries from their own laptops? Or did I miss that?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Hey! It's a SONY -- we know the reason, we don't need no excuses.
Be grateful, things could be worse. At least these batteries don't install a rootkit and then spontaneously combust. Sony, Sony, Sony, its a good thing your so loaded. A smaller company would been dust by now.
__________________________________________
Free iPods? Its legit. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!
Isn't this not supposed to happen? I thought that the ISO 900x process was built to flag these issues before they became the nightmare that has since developed?
This is progress?
Anyone else notice that in a race to lower production costs to their absolute minimum, companies are spending more and more money fixing problems down the line?
I would love to see the bid contracts that went out. Odds are that someone who's a little more reputable was within a few cents per battery of this outfit, but lost out because they weren't the lowest cost bid.
Now you have a piece of paper worth a fraction of a cent costing Sony at least $50 to $100 per battery.
Nice cost savings.
Uhhh, I'm a little confused here. This article from Toshiba's website seems to conflict with that. No?
Probably because, in decending order of importance,
1. A battery doesn't need drivers or transfer data in any form or shape. So basically noone figured out how to make a battery that installs a rootkit. That may well change, though, once trusted computing gets accepted. I'm sure someone will figure out a reason why it's vital to authenticate the battery.
2. A battery can't get copied or ripped to MP3, and you can't upload it on P2P networks. So it's hard to justify -- either to the users or to your own accounting department -- why you'd need an expensive rootkit as copy protection.
3. Who needs rootkits when you can have an incendiary bomb? Already an (IIRC) USPS transport airplane is suspected to have crashed because of a Dell laptop with a Sony battery that caught fire in the hold. We also know of at least one truck that was totally destroyed by such a fire. And god knows what else. Look up the price of an airplane, and it's just entirely unnecessary to install rootkits when you can cause _that_ kinda damage by just being there in the cargo hold. Whatever damage a rootkit can cause, it's small change compared to _that_.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I just replaced the battery in my Acer laptop. The old one seemed to stop holding any charge at all, or just not charging. I know the charging capacity diminishes as the battery ages, but mine went from holding about an hour's-worth of power to nothing in a very short space of time. It's difficult to say exactly when it failed because during that time I almost exclusively used the laptop while on AC power, but I would have expected a more gradual decline.
The battery was a few years old, and maybe it was just its time to go. Still, reading these articles about battery recalls makes me wonder. I don't recall any mention of Sony on the battery, though.
Now it appears it can outburn a Dell too. It is built using some 7000 laptop batteries.!!!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Slashdot is always right.
My recent observations have led me to believe Slashdot leans more toward the left.
1. Make exploding batteries
2. ?????
3. Loss!
Beware, if your hard disk contains music or movie files acquired illegaly, your Sony battery will detect them and explode.
one more exchange complete. one burns blue, one burns orange. collect all 4 pretty colors, considering the recent story of a Gateway battery torching a computer.
between rootkits and burning batteries, it's Sony, the one and only....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The supplier changed the composition of the insulating paper without notice, he said.
will these PR guys ever grow up? The supplier is to blame ? How did this pass quality then?
fifteen jugglers, five believers
Sony better get their act together. This is at least the third major recall on Sony laptop batteries in this year alone, and all for different reasons. If I were a competeing battery manufacturer, I would be very happy right now. If I were Apple, Toshiba or Dell, I would be looking for other suppliers.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Are we going to see a point where running a laptop of any brand off batteries in-flight is banned by various airlines?
It's an issue with Lithium-Ion batteries in general. The Sony faults just make the problems even worse for laptops. All Lithium-Ion batteries have safety concerns when exposed to rapid discharging or overcharging. Specifically, the batteries will become quite hot when this occurs beyond a certain rate. My father, who is not normally a tech savy person, has even known about this flaw for years now because of his hobby: Radio Controlled Airplanes.
People who use electric motors on their RC Planes frequently use Lithium Ion batteries, however, because of the nature of the hobby, the batteries tend to discharge at an extremely high rate, or people in a rush can not pay attention and overcharge them. Apparantly there have been many reports over the years in this hobby of planes exploding in mid air or people's cars/homes catching fire because of a rapid buildup in heat by the batteries. The issue got so prevelant that they actually sell pots for people to place their batteries in so that if they do go up in smoke, they won't catch anything else on fire in the process.
Now, of course, this is a hobby where the batteries are being put under unusual and frequent stress, and I'm sure some of the cases were also due to poor quality control. However, it is just one example of many that shows that the problem is not Sony alone, it is a fundamental problem with Lithium-Ion battery technology in the first place. A significant enough problem that the smallest iregularity can result in potentially major issues. All of this is just another example of why, given the increasing portability demands in the technology sector, we need new battery technologies.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Nope, the software tool only runs on windows. Which would make sense, as all the machines affected are supplied with windows. You can always just check the PN on the battery: PA3465U-1BAS PA3399U-2BAS PA3400U-1BAS PA3465U-1BRS PA3399U-2BRS PA3400U-1BRS All affected batteries.
To recap:
Virgin Airlines was not allowing ANY Apple or Dell computers, regardless of the battery manufacturer, to use batteries on board its planes. Batteries would have to be checked in and sit in the cargo hold of the plane. The only way to power your computer is then from the power brick, which few planes provide.
Now, will Virgin Airlines ban all Toshiba laptop batteries, too?
From that page:
Way to send mixed messages folks. It looks bad for Toshiba that they have faulty batteries that may or may not be under a recall. It looks even worse for Sony as they are responsible for both recalls.
There were news recently in the press that certain laptops are banned on some airlines. Most of those laptops were from Dell. Since the battery issue has also affected the likes of Sony, Toshiba and Apple, they should probably also be banned on airlines to apply this rule uniformly. I was flying last week on Delta and they did not allow my Dell laptop to be switched on. But I noticed that they allowed a passenger seated two rows ahead of me use his Apple notebook.
(I think it was on NPR)...that Virgin Atlantic was banning travellers with Macs or Dells, regardless of the model, from using their laptop batteries while in flight and that they must safely stow batteries separately from the laptops. I wonder if the ban will now extend to Toshiba users? And I have to wonder if other airlines will be taking similar actions. My HP may weigh a ton, but at lease I don't think the battery was made by Sony.
BTW - Toshiba may not be very popular in the US, but I have friends and in-laws in Colombia and they all have Toshiba laptops. I've forwarded this along in case they haven't seen it yet.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
I work for sony VAIO tech support, and the only thing we tell a customer if they think they're battery is affected is that sony uses different saftey features and blah blah and that there are no plans for a recall at this time, there are no reported incidents involving our computers. We do have information about why the exploding batteries were exploding if someone asked us that. But I cant wait for work tomorrow after this bit of good news. Always good to have one more issue to deal with.
BTW, I dont own a single sony product, honestly can't afford them.
With so many Sony battery problems occurring; it seems like Sony is so busy working with the Blue-ray and cell chip for the PS3 that they forgot how to make safely working batteries.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
Here is the link for the Toshiba Battery Recall in Canada
L /-TSB001354.htm
http://209.167.114.38/support/TechSupport/TSBs/AL
More fried balls.
I have one of the affected batteries according to the visual inspection instructions provided by Toshiba here
I rang the Toshiba helpdesk to report this and was told that because I run Linux, this would be a problem. According to the helpdesk assistant, I would need to return the entire laptop to a repair center, and have it running the installed Operating System (Windows XP Home) with the test utility installed. The repair center will then carry out diagnostics to determine if the battery should be replaced or not.
So now I have to back up all of my user data so I can put the restore disc in and install Windows XP just to get a battery swapped.Toshiba can expect a large letter of complaint regarding this once I'm done.