If you haven’t heard, there has been quite a bit of battery shenanigans going on with Dell and Apple laptops/notebooks. It all stems back to certain lithium-ion batteries containing cells manufactured by Sony Corporation of Japan. They pose a safety risk that may result in overheating under rare circumstances (pr from dell and apple). What this really means is that the battery can overheat, melt the computer, start a fire, and or explode.
I already saw a teaser clip from Fox News about how this could be a new threat for air travel, but the reality is that when these things defect, it’s much more of a snap, crackle and pop. Think hot rice crispies, not C4.
Over 4 million batteries are part of the recall, spanning multiple production years and models so don’t take any chances and go to Dell’s and Apple’s respective battery recall pages. With such a highly publicized recall, business owners will surely face litigation if they fail to check their laptops and a employee or customer gets burned. Not to mention the bad press if your laptop goes up in flames at the next corporate event (see picture).
At Evo Networks, we use both Apple and Dell laptops. We ran a check on our batteries and while we had models that could possibly be affected we lucked out, because our specific battery serial numbers were not part of the recall. 
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on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 11:50 am and is filed under General, Macintosh, Windows.
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If you haven’t heard, there has been quite a bit of battery shenanigans going on with Dell and Apple laptops/notebooks. It all stems back to certain lithium-ion batteries containing cells manufactured by Sony Corporation of Japan. They pose a safety risk that may result in overheating under rare circumstances (pr from dell and apple). What this really means is that the battery can overheat, melt the computer, start a fire, and or explode.
I already saw a teaser clip from Fox News about how this could be a new threat for air travel, but the reality is that when these things defect, it’s much more of a snap, crackle and pop. Think hot rice crispies, not C4.
Over 4 million batteries are part of the recall, spanning multiple production years and models so don’t take any chances and go to Dell’s and Apple’s respective battery recall pages. With such a highly publicized recall, business owners will surely face litigation if they fail to check their laptops and a employee or customer gets burned. Not to mention the bad press if your laptop goes up in flames at the next corporate event (see picture).
At Evo Networks, we use both Apple and Dell laptops. We ran a check on our batteries and while we had models that could possibly be affected we lucked out, because our specific battery serial numbers were not part of the recall.
This entry was posted
on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 11:50 am and is filed under General, Macintosh, Windows.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I checked our offrice laptops, which do not fall into the proper size range for the recalls. However, our 12″ PBk at home does, and I have signed up for a replacement battery from Apple. Very simple from their website- you put in the battery SN, and the laptop SN, they verify that it is part of the recall, then you answer some shipping Q’s, and they send you a replacement in 4-6 weeks, with a return mailer. Couldn’t be much easier than that.
August 30th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Those flaming laptop photos must have been a PR nightmare! Here’s a take from a PR expert I ran across that provides some recommendations for how they should have responded to this - http://www.levick.com/resources/topics/articles/dell_battery_crisis.php
Also, how does Sony get off easy on all of this? Apparently Apple had some issues with their batteries too.
August 30th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Dell has definitely been hurting lately, between issues with Intel/AMD. poor service in the consumer market, and of course the batteries.
The reason that Sony is getting off so easily (only in the public eye), is that it is covering the cost of the all the replacements. I believe to the tune of 100 million US dollars +. I’m sure some of that is going to pay for PR costs for Dell and Apple, as well as discounts on future deals assuming Apple and Dell will choose Sony for future work.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:33 am
[…] As discussed in a earlier blog post the recent Battery recalls affecting Apple and Dell laptops has finally rattled the airlines. Despite the fact that these exploding/melting laptops are hardly a threat to bringing down an airline of any size. Virgin Atlantic and Korean Air have instituted battery bans on their flights. […]