HP Recalls 70,000 Laptop Batteries

angry tapir writes "Hewlett-Packard has recalled Lithium-Ion batteries used in some of its laptops, as they pose a fire hazard. The recall covers about 70,000 batteries used in the company's HP and Compaq-branded laptops. The affected laptops can be found here."

Comments

No batteries =

[spiffydudex]

Mass computer genocide....

Re:No batteries =

[Daryen]

Every one of these incidents seeks to assure us that there is a flaw in the manufacturing process.

I am beginning to suspect that there is a flaw in the design of today's lithium batteries.

Re:No batteries =

[Chyeld]

That being they are being manufactured in a country with historically poor quailty control and an incentive to cut corners whenever possible.

Re:No batteries =

[erroneus]

That is the exact truth and I can only imagine that business people are well aware of this and as in the case of other safety recall situations, they factor these things into the business plan. Cheaper to make, the risk of recall costs, rise in margin, risk to business name/reputation. I'm sure it all works out for them.

Re:No batteries =

[Locke2005]

I am beginning to suspect that there is a flaw in the design of today's lithium batteries.

Modern lithium batteries are designed to achieve the the highest energy density possible. I suspect they do this by cutting as close as possible to the limits. The higher the energy density, the greater the chance of a short circuit and the greater the chance of a meltdown if something shorts out. Sure, they could design safer batteries, but those would weigh more and last less time on a charge -- not exactly the attributes the market is demanding. There may be exceptions, but in general if you want to store more energy in a smaller space with less weight, it is inevitably going to be more volatile.

I wonder how long it will be before the TSA makes these batteries illegal on planes.

Re:No batteries =

[omnichad]

Lithium batteries are dangerous. Period. The fact that they are being made in China should scare you. If anything goes wrong, lithium batteries want to overheat or explode.

Re:No batteries =

[rrohbeck]

Anything with a high energy density needs to be made with high reliability. Just ask anybody in the auto industry (let alone rocketry.)
The problem is that quality/reliability is only viewed as excess cost for throwaway items like computers.

Re:No batteries =

[morgan_greywolf]

Wow! I didn't know they were making lithium ion batteries in the United States!

Re:No batteries =

[funky49]

Thanks Joe Biden!

Re:No batteries =

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We're well past that sort of chickenshit bad quality control.

Lets see the Chinese try to build a bad laptop battery that takes down the world's financial system in a whirlwind of pure fraud when it catches fire!

USA!USA!USA!

Re:No batteries =

[inviolet]

That being they are being manufactured in a country with historically poor quailty control and an incentive to cut corners whenever possible.

An added complication is the urgent business directive to change the battery geometry once a year. You know, move the pins over a quarter-inch or so, or change the size of the power jack by a millimeter, or move the cells around. Just enough change to obsolete all currently-owned batteries, wall warts, and car adapters.

Re:No batteries =

[Sandbags]

Why not simply state it as it is:

"3rd world battery manufacturer failes to deliver on contractual quality guidelines and costs HP a shitload of dough recalling 70,000 batteries, while themselves shrinking our of existance with full pockets."

or

"HP continues trend of failing to learn the lesson that using the lowest bidder does not cost less afterall; recalls 70,000 substandard 3rd party batteries made in some country you will never go to buy guys with names you can't spell who in total make less than your anual salary."

Re:No batteries =

[Sandbags]

Actually, the issue is NOT the individual cells, it's a problem called cascade failure and is usually do to the failure of a terminal seperator inside the battery causeing a short. The individual cells are actually quite stable, but like a 9volt touching a coin in your pocket, the can get very hot very quickly. At about 600 degrees, they combust internally and expel steam, which can chain react heating nearby cells to combustible temps as well.

The space inside the battery pack that hits 600 degrees can be extremely small, not mutch larger than the head of a pin, which might make the battery case feel only "uncomfortably warm" just before explosion starts (which is an extended process of a slow burn explosion, but a "boom".)

Li-Ions are often seen "shooting fire" while combusting.

More often than not, this actually isn't manufacturing defect per-se, but batteries being exposed to flexing, alternating hot/cold environments, being dropped repeatedly, and other things that may not actually damage the outside of the pack, but cause internal compression damage eventually leading to a short or failure.

Re:No batteries =

[compro01]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7bEkk5GHwg

Re:No batteries =

[oldhack]

I rather blame HP than Chinese manufacturers. Whether HP sources from China or Mars is entirely HP's issue - it's sold by HP, not by the Chinese.

So. Sony - kaboom. Dell - kaboom. HP - kaboom.

Interestingly, I have been using ThinkPads for years, and now it's a Chinese brand and so far no kaboom.

Re:No batteries =

[v1]

But does HP make its own batteries? Sony makes batteries for a lot of people, I doubt HP in-houses' their battery cells.

Re:No batteries =

[v1]

in general if you want to store more energy in a smaller space with less weight, it is inevitably going to be more volatile.

I don't know if "volatile" is the word I'd use. Assuming nothing goes wrong with the manufacturing process, one battery would be very much like the next regardless of density. The problem is that when you want to jack up the density, it means the sizes get smaller, and therefore your tolerances become more important This means your manufacturing process has to improve its tolerances, or your failure rate is going to go up.

"Volatile" makes it sound like any such battery is just an accident waiting to happen. I think it's more a case of it being a crapshoot whether a given battery is going to last a week or a year, or be able to survive being dropped five times, or not, depending on where the tolerances landed, determined at birth. "lower consistency in quality" seems to sum it up better.

Re:No batteries =

[Darkness404]

But they still sell them, and they still sell them in a much more direct way than Best Buy selling replacement batteries or Wal-Mart selling them. Essentially they become part of the HP laptop and thus should be held responsible.

Re:No batteries =

[home-electro.com]

Wow, that was close. All but a couple digits in s/n match my notebook's battery.

Re:No batteries =

[morgan_greywolf]

Mod parent up!

Funniest. Slashdot. Post. Evar!

Dump the battery

[hypnolizard]

That should fix it once and for all.

Re:Dump the battery

[Anonymous Coward]

That should fix it once and for all.

Do you mean Li-Ion batteries in general?

They offer the best power to weight ratio and if you include length of time before charges, they're the best thing to come to the market.

Re:Dump the battery

[Faylone]

except for that part about exploding...

Re:Dump the battery

[Khyber]

With the way portable devices are becoming ultra low-powered, who needs high energy density? With the improvements of PV tech, we can build laptops right now that don't require batteries at all. If we took some of yesteryear's tech (say a P3 and PC-133 SDRAM, and maybe a GeForce 4) and gave it a modern update (45nm or smaller manufacturing process, pipeline resizing, etc) you would have a very decent, low-powered system that might be able to run entirely off of solar. Eliminate all moving parts (use SSD drives and drop the optical drive) and use LED backlit display.

Re:Dump the battery

[Darkness404]

But who wants a low powered Pentium III and slow RAM? Sure, its energy efficient but I'd much rather be able to run something other than an ultra-minimal Linux distro, e-mail, and a laggy browser. Plus, whats the point of entirely off of solar? There are some occasions that running off of solar is impossible (at night, inside, etc).

Sure, we could do it, but it would be expensive, underpowered, and have no real reason.

Re:Dump the battery

[Khyber]

What YOU consider underpowered and what I consider underpowered are two totally different things.

The way you speak, you seem like the gamer type. Sorry, but the majority of the world isn't a gamer/superHDvideo/200 instances of Photocrap running type. I know MANY businesses that still use Pentium 2 hardware and see no reason to move BECAUSE IT PERFORMS TO THEIR EXPECTATIONS. I still have a Celeron machine that I use purely for some old school gaming, it's a Win95OSR2 box. It still runs like a damned champ, and does EVERYTHING except hardcore gaming, some flash gaming, and HD video. It's productive enough for me that I still use it.

*grumbles* frigging bleeding-edge 7-digits. Get off my lawn!

what about the power supply

[phrostie]

both myself and my son have/had laptops on that list.
neither computer had a battery failure, but both have had the powersupply fail.
last year my son's went out and so we swapped batteries so he could run his long enough to get his data off. then a few weeks ago mine did the exact same thing.

i just got a new HP. i'll have to check it's battery

Re:what about the power supply

[drinkypoo]

I had a HP power supply die. What died was the cable on the way out of the power supply. Spend another five cents on some decent wire? Nah. Spend twenty bucks (ten bucks parts, ten bucks shipping) to keep the user going on warranty. Dum de dum dum dum!

Even dumber: they sent me two power supplies for LCD monitors before sending me the right thing, and I didn't have to send anything back. Hooray for needless bullshit in the mail!

Re:what about the power supply

[chrish]

Wait, wait, wait.

You and your son have HP computers that both failed in the same way, and they're both on the recall list.

And you just bought a new one from the same company.

Why would you do such a thing?!

Re:what about the power supply

[phrostie]

my wife got it for me. it was a christmas present.

I don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that this HP explosive laptop stuff is a bunch of FUD, and given it's more then stellar track rec

4th Recall in 5 years

[Het Irv]

This is the 4th recall of batteries by HP in 5 years... You would think, okay maybe the first is a fluke, everyone screws up sometimes. The second time, you get a bit worried, but four times? I think someone in HP needs to work out how much each of these recalls is costing them per year, maybe those figures will convince them that manufacturing them to a higher standard wouldn't be a bad idea.

Re:4th Recall in 5 years

[inviolet]

This is the 4th recall of batteries by HP in 5 years... You would think, okay maybe the first is a fluke, everyone screws up sometimes. The second time, you get a bit worried, but four times? I think someone in HP needs to work out how much each of these recalls is costing them per year, maybe those figures will convince them that manufacturing them to a higher standard wouldn't be a bad idea.

Why in the world would you assume that they haven't already performed exactly that calculation?

On a less cynical note, high-density lithium-polymer batteries is a very tricky business... doing it en masse doubly so.

Re:4th Recall in 5 years

[Het Irv]

I'll acknowledge that your first point is valid. I have heard about companies doing things like that, but in todays world, its getting easier for companies to be called out on things like that. Also the less I think about it the better the world seems. Utopian Fantasies FTW!

Re:4th Recall in 5 years

[TheRealMindChild]

Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one

Re:4th Recall in 5 years

[citylivin]

Its quite likely that most of the 70 000 batteries will not ever be submitted for recall.

I have two anecdotes, the first one was with this exact laptop line (dv20xx). A co worker brought her laptop in for servicing with a video issue. Looked like the video card was going bad or the connection between the screen and the video card was bad. I forget the exact details, but i remember there being sporadic video loss/ corruption. I started researching the problem and one of the first google hits described the problem exactly, and informed me about the recall. They had to replace the whole mainboard. I believe it was bad solder joints on the GPU, but of course HP will never say exactly what the problem was.
The point of this story was that she was ready to buy a new PC, and surely would have, if i had not found a solution that was covered under recall.

The second anecdote involves my friends 2002 (or 2004) honda civic. He was having this noise from the engine compartment, but only when the car was cold. The noise would fade after a while but it was quite loud. I told him to take it to a trusted mechanic that I use for complicated or hard to diagnose problems. The mechanic came back and told him that the exhaust manifold was cracked. As they were quite knowledgeable, they were able to determine that this repair was a manufacturer defect and actually had been issued as a recall item. What that meant was that instead of paying 1000$, he could take the car to the dealer for free and get them to replace it out of warranty, which he promptly did.

The moral of this story is that people always assume that issues they have with a product are unique to them. Unless they are knowledgeable, they also don't realize that the manufacturer sometimes may be obliged to fix a problem long after the warranty has expired. This is why it is not a net loss to HP, and why they will never fix their problems. Most likely, people have already tossed the poor quality batteries and bought aftermarket replacements. The only thing this does, is teach people working in the field (us slashdotters) that HP is a brand to be avoided as they seem to enjoy selling out of spec or plain old defective parts.

"AxBxC=X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
Corporations will do anything that they can get away with. Profits today, let someone else deal with the fallout tomorrow.

Re:4th Recall in 5 years

[TheLink]

And some years later they wonder why fewer and fewer people are buying their cars.

Manufacturers in it for the long term would do A * B * C + "cost of losing good will" vs cost of recall.

Of course it's hard to do that if the shareholders and CEOs only look as far ahead as the next financial quarter.

Re:4th Recall in 5 years

[Captain Cabron]

They need better r&d and testing.

See "The R&D issue"

Hurd, shifting now into a mock dialogue with an HP researcher: "'You know, Bill Hewlett is calling us from the heavens, saying, Spend more on R&D.' And I'm like, 'Guys, I'm glad Bill's calling, but I've got a few questions before we take the call.'"

This is what happens when you try to engineer something with teams around the world.

This is what happens when you try to engineer something without engineers.

I bet dollars to doughnuts that they just design the package and are having problems with the cell manufacturers.

I bet dollars to doughnuts that when they slap their logo on the battery and sell it as their own, they're liable.

Shame really...

[ausekilis]

Without my Li-Ion battery, I'll have to start using the stove to cook meals.

Overheating...

[sou11ess]

My HP dv9000 is horrible when it comes to overheating. I specifically bought a laptop cooler to keep it cool and operational. Google "hp dv9000 overheating" for a number of people with similar issues.

I wonder how much of the overheating is from the battery simply be improperly designed, or if the laptop's own design heats up the battery more than normal.

Re:Overheating...

[DigitalSorceress]

My dv9000 overheats so badly it shuts down when doing anything graphically intensive (playing video games and/or using Adobe Lightroom are the biggest causes for me).

I've tried laptop coolers, but their airflow is a joke.

The only method of keeping it from crashing that worked reliably was propping it up at a weird angle with the cooling vents right at the cold air discharge of a hotel room air conditioner. (I was on a week-long photography trip across the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec, and the laptop was so crashy, I could barely transfer my day's photos over to it without the A/C trick.)

If the thing wasn't totally out of warranty, I'd ship it right back to HP and insist they fix it. As it is, I just gave up on it and went with a netbook instead. I'll save the heavy editing for when I can get back home to a real computer.

HP used to make THE best scanners and printers. For all I know, they still do, but honestly, between my laptop issues and the fact that both my mom and my sister had HP laptops that went titsup in short order, I'm done with buying their products.

Re:Overheating...

[Svartalf]

Depends on the model of laptop, I think- the Turions seem to run hotter and have more issues (based on my unscientific observations of about a half dozen of their DV-6000/9000 laptops, including my Core Duo model that's still chugging...).

But the word's out on things- the resellers are telling customers to shy away from HP's unless the thing precisely meets your requirements from start to finish.

Re:Overheating...

[Khyber]

As a former tech that specialized in the repair of the DV9000 series of HP laptop, I can tell you firsthand it's the bullshit thermal pads they use on their internal heatpipe. Remove your logic board from the laptop, and replace all thermal pads (should be three) with a real thermal compound, like arctic silver. You will never have an overheating problem again. Those pads are just absolute garbage.

Re:Overheating...

[socrplayr813]

Like a lot of slashdotters, I fix computers for friends and family on a fairly regularly basis. I'll agree that HPs generally do tend to run hotter than a comparable Dell, Toshiba, etc, regardless of the processor. I have no idea why. I'd guess it's because they just don't put enough thought into cooling their laptops.

I will say that my HP tx2500 (Turion) certainly runs hotter than I'd prefer when doing intensive things, but it's bearable. However, I think some of the HP laptops out there give you the best bang for your buck, as long as you can deal with the heat. And my tx2500 (and the newer model, whatever they call it now) are the only laptop/tablets I've come across with even passable graphics capabilities. It'd be a shame if HP took a dive here. I'd love to see them get their heat issues under control.

Re:Overheating...

[Majik Sheff]

The upside to the disgrace that HP has become is that they are on the leading edge of green energy. The power generated from Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard spinning in their graves is now sufficient to power their entire West Coast operation.

Re:Very scary indeed

[Yvan256]

Sony?

We do it to ourselves

[digsbo]

I price shop for cheap laptop batteries. I guess I am partially responsible for encouraging low-quality manufacturing. Really, I think I know that I might get a substandard product. It would be hypocritical for me to point the finger at Chinese manufacturers who are more or less giving me what I want.

I'll remind my wife to try to keep her laptop's airflow ports unobstructed...

Re:We do it to ourselves

[Darkness404]

It depends. For example with a lot of computers, you get the same product (essentially) if you buy a whitebox PC, a cheap Dell, or an overpriced Sony with the same specs. Brand name has a lot to do with the price and not so much on the quality. When you buy the cheap batteries from some unpronounceable Chinese company, you could just as easily bought a sub-standard battery, or bought the same sub-standard battery as if you would have paid $40 more and gone with the "official" battery which is simply a relabeled version of that.

fight club

[skathe]

Take the number of batteries in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

I guess X was large.

Unclear on the concept

[LMacG]

The linked recall notice says "After removing the recalled battery from their notebook computer, consumers may use the AC adapter to power the computer until a replacement battery arrives."

If I wanted a desktop computer, perhaps I'd have bought one?

Re:Unclear on the concept

[xenolion]

Aw there you go again with the thinking again. Damn looks like the wife is going to take my laptop again. :(

Re:Unclear on the concept

[socrplayr813]

Unfortunately, a lot of standard consumers today want a laptop because it's cute and portable. It doesn't matter that they'll never take it anywhere; that's not the point. The point is that they COULD take it somewhere. It's a waste, but it's really hard to fight that momentum, especially with the marketing reinforcing it.

Re:This is a good thing!

[Red Flayer]

It was probably a single unfortunate event that sparked the recall.

Actually, recalls are typically not done unless there are multiple failures, and more expected. The risk of the *your* battery catching fire may be low... but it's not zero. And the costs associated with that risk could be fairly high (personal injury, property damage, data loss, work stoppage).

I see no moral problem in this. The company has already spent enough on the recall and obviously your battery has no value to them - there's more likely a cost for getting rid of it.

I'm not sure if large-scale Li ion battery recycling is worthwhile to them; but if it is profitable, then there *may* be a moral problem.

But if you do keep the old battery, please dispose of it properly when you're done with it. This means bringing it (or shipping it) to a battery recycling collection point, and potentially paying a small fee, depending on who you're dealing with.

Re:No batteries = Me?

[Cheney]

It almost saddens me that my battery stopped taking a charge exactly a year after the warranty ends. I almost wish I had an exploding battery just so I might get a free one.

Just letting of some steam: dv6000? WTF?

[schweini]

What the heck is wrong with HP, or specifically, with the morons that designed the dv6000 series, of which i am a 'proud' (meh!) owner?
This laptop had its internatl power circuitry fry (HP acknowledges this, and offers a free mail-in repair, even after warranty), the Wifi-mini-PCI card simply disappeared completely (under Windows and linux), and chooses to re-appear aprox. once a month (HP acknowledges this, and IIRC also offers a free off-warranty repair for this. Both of these symptoms happened to a friend's DV9000, too. And now the battery is a fire hazard? I know i am spoiled because my last laptop was a good old indestructible Thinkpad A30 (well, the GPU has some problems, but after so many years, i'd say that's forgivable). But i will be sure not to buy an HP again, until i hear some VERY good news about their engineering skills.

Re:Just letting of some steam: dv6000? WTF?

[Captain Cabron]

I hear ya... I now have 2 laptops with recalled batteries, a desktop with a bad Nvidia chipset that they waited until was out of warranty to recall, and another desktop that I bought factory "refurbished" that arrived with a broken DVD burner that had pieces audibly loose inside, a shattered SATA power connector hanging off the power supply, and (a year later) developed a problem of spitting out garbled text at POST instead of booting up. At least when I pried open that DVD burner I found a beat up pr0n disc.

Seriously, how bad does quality control have to be to refurbish a computer but miss two broken parts including a DVD drive that won't even open and close?

Whatever quality HP used to have is looooong gone.
They're just another crap commodity PC producer hoping their products will go out of warranty before all the defects manifest.

And overseas?

[jijitus]

What about laptops sold outside the US? I have a cheap F754LA (LA for Latin American) and the battery is listed among the ones to be recalled.
I think I will get nothing from the local HP support center (in Argentina). My brother has a (cheap, of course) V3614 and the red color vanishes while adjusting the screen angle. The HP guys kept it for full 3 weeks and returned it unfixed. "Not an issue" they said.

Re: darn, 787 decission

[cheekyboy]

Hmmm, I might reconsider to never fly routes that do a 787 in future since 90% of the parts are made in said country with cut corners tm procedures.

I WIN!

[Wamellx]

Of course my laptop battery is affected by the recall, who here thinks I should send it in, or just keep it.