August 19th, 2006
Dell, Sony Discussed Battery Issues 10 Months Ago
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Last year the big winner (or loser) debacle-wise, was Sony, for its DRM issues. This year (so far) it’s … hey, Sony again! (with Dell), for the recall of 4.1 million laptop batteries. As I previously wrote, there were incidents of laptops burning long ago, and it looks like both companies knew about these battery issues months ago.
Spokesman Rick Clancy said the companies had conversations in October 2005 and again in February 2006. Discussions were about the problem of small metal particles that had contaminated Lithium-Ion battery cells manufactured by Sony, causing batteries to fail and, in some cases, overheat.
As a result of those conversations, Sony made changes to its manufacturing process to minimize the presence and size of the particles in its batteries. However, the company did not recall batteries that it thought might contain the particles because it wasn’t clear that they were dangerous, Clancy said. Source: InfoWorld
We Say: I guess the danger is clear now. Is Sony going for two straight years at the top of the foolishness chart? Maybe at the end of the year I should write an article on the biggest mistakes of the year. 
Jimmy Daniels says:
I, a computer technician, named Robert Day, said the company recieved hundreds of laptops that were melted or burnt because of the defective battery. And he sent hundreds of pictures to Consumeraffairs.com, although none were posted when I wrote it.
August 20th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Jimmy Daniels says:
Michael, could you fix that comment, guess I forgot to close a tag or something.
August 20th, 2006 at 9:17 am
vargoyle says:
Yeah these batteries are bad. I have seen videos of them catching on fire, most likly when used on a hard surface as the airflow isnt so good.
August 20th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
IT Blogwatch says:
Sony tells of Dell cell hell (and pix o’ the day)
Boom! It’s IT Blogwatch, in which Sony admits it knew about the Dell exploding battery problem ten months ago. Not to mention great pictures from Flickr…
August 21st, 2006 at 2:09 am
Links Fight says:
Hello, i had one of them, and it’s true that they burned up. I’t was awsome, but ‘childrens don’t do it in home’
August 21st, 2006 at 6:39 am
Siera says:
I think that with last year’s Sony rootkit and this year’s exploding batteries that there is a contest among the divisions at Sony on which division can destroy a consumers computer the fastest and make the problem hardest to resolve. So far the electronics division has won because it is impossible it get your computer back to a previous state. I suddenly miss those rootkits…at least you have the ablity to reuse your computer once you reformat.
Just Kidding about the rootkits.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:33 pm