Filed under: Laptops

Hooray, Lenovo has joined the battery recall party! For those of you keeping score at home, that brings the number of manufacturers to five, including Apple, Panasonic, Toshiba and Dell. The recall, anounced today, affects nearly 170,000 batteries in the US, and over 350,000 additionally worldwide, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. The USCPSC also says that the recall was triggered by Lenovo’s confirmation of the battery that exploded at LAX a few weeks ago and that this latest battery recall affects the following ThinkPad notebook computers “sold between February 2005 and September 2006: T Series (T43, T43p, T60); R Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e); and X Series (X60, X60s).” Furthermore, Lenovo has put out a press release stating: “Additionally, since these batteries can also be used with ThinkPad T4x Series or ThinkPad R5x Series systems, customers who ordered an extra battery or received a replacement battery for any ThinkPad T4x or ThinkPad R5x Series notebook PC between February 2005 and September 2006 may also have a battery subject to recall.” Now, Alan Cox’s exploded ThinkPad 600 isn’t part of the list, which leads us to believe that this isn’t the last we’ve heard about Sony’s exploding battery fiasco.

Read – US Consumer Product Safety Commission

[Thanks, JJL]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras, Laptops

Yeah, we’re trying to hold back the snickering too. It seems the IEEE has chosen now as the time to start looking over those (previously innocent) battery protocols, and the timing couldn’t be any more convenient. Rather than buckling down and getting a finalized 802.11n standard out the door, the task force is being silently forced to take a good, hard look at battery criteria. Currently focused on IEEE P1825 — the designation for lithium-ion and lithium-ion polymer batteries used in digital cameras and camcorders — the crew is hoping to set more uniform regulations for the “design, production, and evaluation” of said cells. The update is supposedly aimed at revising “design analysis, testing and qualification checks” to ensure those QA reports filter out any, um, potentially explosive misfits, and while the project is scheduled to be completed “within 18 months,” we know how quickly these folks let their deadlines slip. But the force isn’t letting those increasingly-concerned computer manufactures get too much of a head start, as the IEEE 1625 is also slated for a (very necessary) revamp — which makes perfect sense considering its label: “laptop battery standard.”

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops, Transportation

Virgin Atlantic has altered its sweeping policy of banning all Inspiron, Latitude, iBook, PowerBook, MacBook and MacBook Pro batteries from its flights, saying “If the battery is identified as being from the affected batch as identified by Apple and Dell, the battery must be removed. In cabins where the seats are fitted with In Seat Power Supplies, leads/adapters will be offered. Where no ISPS is provided or no laptop leads/adapters are available, the use of these affected laptops is prohibited.” No word yet on whether Qantas or Korean Air has gotten the memo that it doesn’t need to forbid every Dell laptop under the sun on their flights as well. But we’ve yet to hear of airlines banning Panasonic, Toshiba, and IBM laptops — something that may be coming sooner than you think, if someone doesn’t figure out pretty fast what the devil is going on.

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops

We’re not sure if these new fire-retardant covers are meant to protect nearby objects in the event of battery explosion, or if they’re meant to protect the MacBook from thermal disaster in its surrounding environment — but either way, they’re pretty stylish new necessity. Wrappers, a British retailer, is now selling jumbocord covers made from graphite granules embedded in the supposed contract-quality corduroy that has passed a “100,000 wear and tear rub test” — which we really hope doesn’t mean it was ubbed 100,000 times by a person. MacBook sleeves are £19.50 ($36) including worldwide shipping, and can be embroidered with initials for an additional three quid ($5.63). Regardless of whether or not your order one, we think that Korean Air, Qantas and Virgin should get in touch with Wrappers to make some airplane-friendly fire-retardant sleeves for the type of computers that have a better chance of actually exploding.

[Via Laptop]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops

So it would seem that Korean Air has forbidden all Dell laptops and Apple‘s PowerBook and iBook models from its flights due to the risk that those computers’ batteries might explode, reports The Korea Times. The newspaper also reported that Australian airline Qantas made a similar ban last month for the same reasons. Naturally, the longer it takes Sony, the batteries’ manufacturer, to sort through this exploding battery fiasco, the harder and harder its going to be to get your Dell or Apple on a plane, but we know the pressure’s on. Sony company has already faced the wrath of the Japanese Ministry of Trade, and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, and apparently the US Federal Aviation Administration is also looking into the problem as well. Damn, it’s hard out there for Sony — maybe it’d do well to quell everyone’s fears by giving out some free PS3s for awhile, whattayasay?

[Via ThinkSecret]

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