Virgin eases in-flight Apple, Dell laptop battery limits
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Only machines unaffected by vendors' recalls Exclusive Virgin Atlantic has updated its restrictions for the use of Apple- and Dell-branded notebook computers on its flights. The good news: the ban on battery use is no longer total - the company is now restricting only those batteries whose serial numbers are covered by the vendors' product recalls.â¦
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Apple 1, Branson 0 Virgin has closed Virgin Digital, its Windows Media-based alternative to Apple's iTunes. It stopped selling one-off downloads on Friday, though subscribers will still have access to their collections until their next monthly payment is due.â¦
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Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., which recalled nearly 6 million notebook batteries between them this month, are among PC makers planning to meet next month to discuss setting design and safety standards for lithium-ion batteries used in portable electronic devices.
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Processors specially developed by Intel for&#160;Apple&#39;s new MacBook Air laptop&#160;will soon be used by other PC vendors in systems, possibly creating competition for what Apple calls the world&#39;s lightest and thinnest notebook.Two PC makers will use the miniaturized Intel Core 2 Duo processors used by Apple in MacBook Air, said a source familiar with Intel&#39;s plans. Systems powered by the chips will be released soon, the source said.The companies&#39; names weren&#39;t revealed, but the chip could bring smaller and lighter notebooks that could compete in size and performance with the ultra-thin MacBook Air, which weighs 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms) and measures 0.16 inches (0.4 centimeters) at its thinnest part and 0.76 inches (1.93 cms) at its thickest part.Apple asked Intel to develop powerful chips for MacBook Air that are 60 percent smaller than the normal size, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said during a keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo earlier this month. Intel obliged, which led to the development of smaller Core 2 Duo processors.&quot;All you have to do is check out the size and shape of the MacBook Air to see what the shrink enables -- smaller, lighter form factors that were physically not possible before,&quot; said Connie Brown, an Intel spokeswoman.The MacBook Air comes with miniaturized Intel Core 2 Duo processors running at either 1.6Ghz or 1.8GHz, with the Intel 965GMS chip set and integrated graphics. Manufactured using the 65-nanometer process, the chips belong to Intel&#39;s Merom family of processors.Intel shrunk the CPU and chip set for a 60 percent reduction in total footprint to comparable Merom processors, Brown said. While delivering similar performance, the chips use 20 watts of power, lower than comparable Merom chips that use 35 watts.The miniaturized chip was designed for Apple, but other PC makers can use it, Brown said.PC manufacturers could adopt the miniaturized Merom CPU in mini desktops or subnotebooks, but the Mac OS X Leopard operating system gives MacBook Air an advantage, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight 64. Other systems could be based on Windows or Linux.Apple also has a leg up in product design, which potential MacBook Air competitors will find hard to emulate, Brookwood said.&quot;What has resulted from Apple&#39;s move to Intel chips is its forcing other OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to pay more attention to the styling of their systems, which is clearly an advantage for users,&quot; Brookwood said.This was the first time Intel developed a small form-factor chip from a normal-sized mobile processor, Brown said.However, Intel has talked about developing chips with smaller form factors in the past.At the Intel Developer Forum last year, Intel talked about shrinking the size of chips by up to 60 percent for its next-generation Montevina mobile platform, which will include the new Penryn processors manufactured using the 45-nm process. The small form-factor chips will be released shortly after the normal-sized chips, due to ship by the middle of this year.It&#39;s not a coincidence that both Intel and Apple have talked about a 60 percent size reduction in chips, Brookwood said. Apple has taken a step ahead by adopting the Merom processor for the MacBook Air, and a natural path of progression is to upgrade to the small form-factor Penryn processors that will be part of Montevina, he said.Apple doesn&#39;t comment on future products, a company spokesman wrote in an e-mail.
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Ten days after Dell's record-setting notebook battery recall, Apple Computer Inc. told its customers Thursday to return 1.8 million batteries that could cause their Mac laptops to overheat and catch fire.
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MacCentral - Apple Computer Inc. on Tuesday updated the company's iBook consumer notebook, adding built-in AirPort Extreme across the line. The new machines feature a 1.33GHz processor at the high-end, and a low-end model that sells for under US&#36;1,000.
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Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has issued a warning related to potential problems with the batteries in some 28,000 of its 15-inch PowerBook G4 laptop computers, telling customers that the batteries may pose a fire hazard due to overheating.
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Virgin Blue is increasing its domestic and international fuel surcharge fees as a result of record high oil prices. The domestic flight surcharge will go from $6 per sector to $10, while the surcharge on international
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(InfoWorld) - Dell has increased by 100,000 the number of laptop batteries it is recalling due to a potential fire hazard, while Toshiba said it would take part in Sony's voluntaryÂ battery replacement programÂ kicked off Thursday. Fujitsu indicated that it was also considering a voluntary recall. Dell said it received new information that caused it to increase its recall to 4.2 million batteries from 4.1 million. It urged customers to visitÂ itsÂ battery recall siteÂ and to recheck their batteries to see if they are affected. The site has received almost 200 million hits since theÂ recall was first announcedÂ in August, Dell said. The problems affect battery packs containing Sony-made Lithium Ion cells. Sony has discovered that metallic particles in the cells created during the manufacturing process could cause a short-circuit. That short-circuit could in turn result in a fire, depending on the way the laptop is designed. While the affected notebooks from Dell and Apple Computer, which hasÂ recalled 1.8 million batteries, pose a potential fire hazard, Toshiba said its laptops are not in danger of catching fire. It said it was recalling the laptops voluntarily to ease concerns among customers. Toshiba offered toÂ replace 830,000 laptops, including some of its popular Satellite and Portege models. Fujitsu indicated that it would also be likely to join the voluntary recall, although details had not been announced late Friday in Japan. Toshiba, and possibly Fujitsu, are taking advantage of a program announced by Sony on Thursday, which said it would conduct a battery-replacement program in conjunction with laptop makers worldwide. One day earlier, Lenovo GroupÂ added its nameÂ to the list of manufacturers recalling Sony-made battery packs, saying it will recall 526,000 notebooks. Other laptop makers are expected to follow suit and offer new batteries to their customers, said Takashi Uehara, a spokesman for Sony in Tokyo. The plan might reassure consumers but will also increase the cost to Sony of the problems. In late August, Sony said it wouldÂ incur costsÂ of between Â¥20 billion and Â¥30 billion ($170 million to $255 million), but that was only for the recalls announced by Dell and Apple. Sony has not updated investors since then. Its battery problems began in October last year when Dell approached the company about a possible problem involving Sony Lithium Ion cells used in battery packs in Dell laptops. Sony changed its manufacturing process to lessen the chance of metallic particles being left in its products, but it wasn't until August this year -- after several well-publicized cases of Dell laptops catching fire -- that Dell began recalling batteries. Apple followed on Aug. 25 with its own recall of 1.8 million batteries, and on Thursday Lenovo joined the list. Together, the recalls that cite a potential fire hazard total about 6.5 million battery packs. Separately, Toshiba last week offered to exchange 340,000 Sony notebook batteries, but not because of a fire hazard. Instead, the defective batteries could unexpectedly cut power to the notebooks, causing users to lose unsaved work, the company said. The latest reports from Toshiba and Fujitsu came after the stock market closed in Japan, but the Lenovo recall had little effect on Sony shares, which closed trading on Friday at Â¥4,780, down less than 1 percent on the day. The overall Japanese stock market as measured by the Nikkei 225 index rose by just under 1 percent to 16,127 points.
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Richard Branson says the Virgin Global Flyer is looking good for its solo trip around the world without refuelling.
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WiMax-capable products were on display all over the CES trade show, yet the announcement at Macworld of Apple's stylishly thin MacBook Air laptop made no reference to the high-speed newtork. Does Steve Jobs know something other vendors don't?
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Apple today introduced the worldâs thinnest notebook: MacBook Air. It measures an unprecedented 0.16 inches at its thinnest point while its maximum height of 0.76 inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks. In addition to a stunning 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, MacBook Air offers a full-size and backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing, and a spacious trackpad with multi-touch gesture support, letting users pinch, rotate and swipe. The new notebook is powered by a 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache, and it includes as standard features 2GB of memory, an 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive, and the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth 2.1. Starting at just $1,799, MacBook Air begins shipping in two weeks.
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British Airways and Richard Branson&#39;s Virgin Atlantic Airways say they will raise fuel surcharges following similar moves by major European carriers this week as oil prices surged.
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Korean Air bans some battery-powered laptops from its flights over fears they may start fires, a report says.
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Virgin Group boss Richard Branson said on Friday he would aim to avoid buying fuel-thirsty four-engined airplanes in future for both economic and environmental reasons.
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To help reduce the risk of fires, air travelers will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage beginning Jan. 1, the Transportation Department said Friday
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(InfoWorld) - Following a series of massive notebook PC battery recalls in August, a group of PC vendors met last week to seek safer lithium ion cells, resolving to draft an improved standard for battery manufacturing and quality control by the second quarter of 2007. About 20 representatives, including people from Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Lenovo Group Ltd. and Polycom Inc. met Sept. 13 in San Jose, California, said Kimberly Sterling, a spokeswoman for IPC, an electronics industry group whose full name is the Association Connecting Electronics Industries. Sterling said some additional companies participated, but declined to name them or indicate how many there were. The companies are trying to allay consumer fears afterÂ a handful of batteries in notebook PCs overheated, some bursting into flames and injuring their users. However, their efforts may be hindered by the absence of Sony Electronics Inc. and possibly Apple Computer Inc. as well, since those companies may not abide by the standard without having an opportunity to help draft it. Sony wouldn't commit to following the IPC advice until it collects further information, said Sony spokesman John Dolak. Sony skipped the meeting because it was never invited, Dolak said. Instead, the company has representatives on similar boards; Sony executive Doug Smith is chairman of the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp., a trade and lobbying group sponsored by battery manufacturers. Apple did not return calls about the meeting, which was run by committee chairman John Grosso, an executive at Dell. In August,Â Dell recalled 4.1 million notebook PC batteries, and Apple recalled 1.8 million notebook batteries.Â Sony made all the faulty batteries and blamed the problem on short circuits caused by a manufacturing flaw that left microscopic shards of metal floating in the lithium ion cell. Polycom, of Pleasanton, California, attended the meeting because it had recalled 27,700 of its wireless conference phones in February 2006. It is unclear whether Sony manufactured those batteries, too. Sony announced another defect in its batteries on Monday, when Toshiba Corp. offered to exchange 340,000 notebook batteries for fear they could suddenly lose power, shutting down the computer without saving users' work. Another hurdle for the nascent IPC standard is criticism from some experts that well-designed laptops shouldn't catch fire even if they do have faulty batteries. If PC vendors had used standard safety precautions in their notebooks, the defective batteries would have merely shut down, not overheated, said Donald Sadoway, a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The technology came out in the mid-90s; we know how to build a safe lithium ion battery," he said. Engineers typically avoid overheating in lithium ion batteries with safety features such as microcircuitry that monitors the charging process, an additive that makes the electrolyte less flammable or a porous polypropylene spacer that melts at high temperatures, automatically shutting down the battery's chemical reaction. Sadoway pointed out that it is PC manufacturers who typically specify requirements to battery suppliers. "So the question in my mind is 'Why are people not building batteries with these safety precautions?' Something is wrong here, and I believe it has to do with human behavior, not electrochemistry," Sadoway said. "In our attempts to bring portable power to the masses, we may have gotten too aggressive in our cost cutting. If you want something that's quickly recharged, delivers high bursts of power on demand, and is cheap cheap cheap, I would say that's over-specified." Sony agreed that variations in PC and battery design can make a difference in how they handle short circuits. After manufacturing, Sony's cells are configured into battery packs by either Sony itself or by third-party contractors such as Simplo Technology of Taiwan. Depending on the contractor, the batteries can use a variety of safety mechanisms, said Sony spokesman Rick Clancy. "Within battery packs, there are different specifications related to charging and voltage, and regulators that monitor temperature to indicate overheating and shut it down," Clancy said. "But we've pretty much agreed with our customers not to point fingers at each other, so I'm not going to get into that." PC designers also make decisions that can affect overheating, such as specifying batteries with a range of 6 to 9 cells, and placing them in various proximity to heat sources such as the processor and charger, he said. Another aspect of computer design that could aggravate faulty batteries is pulse charging, a method of recharging batteries very quickly when they're plugged into a wall outlet, said industry analyst Rob Enderle. Dell disputed that point, saying they are not aware of any connection between pulse charging and overheated batteries, although they do use the technology, according to Dell's chief technology officer, Kevin Kettler. Â