Fujitsu wants 287,000 Sony batteries back

Fujitsu wants 287,000 Sony batteries back

Global recall total pushes past 7.6m

Fujitsu has become the latest notebook ,Sony laptop battery,computer manufacturer to ask its customers to send back batteries made by Sony. Acer may be about to do the same.

Fujitsu today said it was recalling 287,000 Sony-made notebook batteries, Reuters reports. That's in addition to the 4.2m being recalled by Dell, 1.8m by Apple, 830,000 by Toshiba and 526,000 by Lenovo. Fujitsu's recall brings the total to over 7.6m units.

That will grow further if Acer announces a recall too. VGP-BPS8, VGP-BPS9, VGP-BPS10, PCG-R505, PCG-V505,,Earlier this week it emerged the company was in talks with Sony about the issue. Now, that's not a guarantee Acer will ask its customers to send batteries back, but Fujitsu likewise was initially reported to be discussing the problem with Sony and has now formally announced a recall.

It's not clear whether Fujitsu has received reports that any of its laptops overheated and caught fire as a number of other brands' machines have.VGP-BPS8, Acer spokespeople were last week quoted as claiming the company has received no such complaints from its customers

Battery recall spreads like wild, er fire

Toshiba, Dell, IBM. Who's next?

Dell is increasing the number of Sony-made batteries it is recalling from 4.1 million to 4.2 million, the company said today.

The news comes as Lenovo and Toshiba both issued recall notices for some batteries made by Sony. Lenovo said yesterday that the recall affected 526,000 batteries in Thinkpads R, X, and T.

VGP-BPS8, VGP-BPS9, VGP-BPS10, PCG-R505, PCG-V505,

Toshiba announced today that it is recalling 830,000 batteries it sold earlier this year, at Sony's request.

The news has hit investor confidence: Sony shares closed down 0.8 per cent,VGP-BPS9,according to reports, on a day when the Nikkei rose by an average of 0.64 per cent. Toshiba's announcement came after the close.

On a related note, we would like to take this opportunity to point out that although everyone is referring to these as "Zippo" batteries, they are of course, not actually made by Zippo at all.

Zippo has asked us to point out that "Zippo Manufacturing Company is a small company that has made very high quality lighters for almost 75 years".

We are happy to do so, and will henceforth refrain from making any such references, although we do reserve the right to light our cigars with our laptops, should any of them burst into flame
VGP-BPS8, VGP-BPS9, VGP-BPS10, PCG-R505, PCG-V505,
Man saves laptop from battery blaze

Brave or foolhardy? You decide...VGP-BPS10,

An HP notebook was left damaged but not destroyed last week when it became the latest laptop to suffer a battery meltdown - the hasty removal of the power cell prevented a notebook fire like the one that took out a Lenovo ThinkPad two weeks ago. This time the incendiary incident was captured on video.

According to witnesses, the notebook began to emit smoke, at which point the clearly asbestos-fingered owner pulled out the smoking power cell and punted it outside into his firm's parking lot. Just in time: the battery caught fire almost immediately.

It's clear from the pictures the battery must have reached temperatures high enough to melt and scorch the laptop's battery bay.,PCG-R505,

For that reason, we'd never recommend removing an smoking battery. Quite apart from what the heat could do to your hand, here's what happened to the battery after it was removed:


VGP-BPS8, VGP-BPS9, VGP-BPS10, PCG-R505, PCG-V505,
MPEG 4 video file - click to play in new window

You wouldn't want you hands on that...

It's unclear what make of battery was fitted into the HP laptop,PCG-V505, and whether it was the original HP-supplied power cell or a third-party add-in. In April this year, HP asked 15,700 customers to return their notebook batteries, which posed a fire risk