Notebook Battery Recall: Dell, Toshiba and HP Laptops

Another Sony battery recall has been issued for about 35,000 lithium-ion batteries used in Toshiba, Dell and Hewlet-Packard notebook computers. This comes two years after another recall involving millions of Dell notebook batteries that were also manufactured by Sony Energy Devices Corporation.

On October 30, 2008, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission posted information about this latest PC notebook battery recall which was issued after reports were received of at least 19 batteries overheating, including 17 reports of fire or flames caused by the defective lithium-ion battery.

Although no serious personal injury has been caused, at least two consumers have suffered minor burns and 10 of the cases resulted in property damage.

The recalled notebook batteries included in a number of laptop computer models shipped between November 2004 and June 2006, including:

• Hewlett-Packard: HP Pavilion (dv1000, dv8000, zd8000), Compaq Presario(v2000 and v2400) and HP Compaq (nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230, nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120, nx9600)
• Toshiba: Satellite (A70/A75, P30/P5, M30X/M35X, M50/M55) and Tecra (A3, A5, S2)
• Dell: Latitude(110L) and Inspiron (1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, 5160)

The recalled batteries were manufactured by Sony Energy Devices Corporation of Japan, and could contain battery model numbers starting with A), L0, L1, GC or OU091 located on the battery label.

Owners have been requested to immediately remove the recalled battery from their laptop computer and contact the notebook manufacturer for a free replacement.

In 2006, over 8 million lithium-ion notebook batteries were recalled by Sony Energy Devices Corp. due to similar concerns about overheating and fire hazards. These batteries were used in laptops sold by Lenovo Group, Apple, Toshiba and Dell.

On September 4, 2008, for unrelated reasons, a Sony VAIO TZ notebook computer recall was issued for about 430,000 laptops due to a potential risk that they could short circuit and overheat.