Toshiba has been forced to recall 340,000 laptop
batteries made by Sony.
Last month, Dell recalled 4.1 million laptop batteries made by
Sony, and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries made by the same
supplier. The batteries were found to be a potential fire
hazard.
Reuters reports that the batteries being recalled by Toshiba
though are not a potential fire hazard, but could fail because of
problems with storing and transmitting power.
The affected batteries are used in a Dynabook range of machines
from Toshiba, and were made by Sony in spring this year.
The English version of the Toshiba website does not so far
report the battery recall, but the home page does prominently
state, “We have investigated with Sony whether those PCs that
employ the subject batteries are affected with the same problem
that caused the recent recalls issued by Dell and Apple, and have
found that the system design and the protection system of Toshiba
notebook PCs differ from those of Dell and Apple.”
The statement goes on, “We have found no evidence that the
problem reported by Dell and Apple in their recalls applies to our
notebook PCs. Sony has confirmed to us that there is no such
problem as cited in the recalls of Dell and Apple with the battery
packs supplied to Toshiba.”
At least three airlines – Virgin, Quantas and Korean Air – have
already banned the inflight use of batteries to power Dell and
Apple laptops.
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