Sanyo to make more laptop batteries
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Osaka-based electronics maker Sanyo Electric Co. said Wednesday it will spend 30 billion yen ($245 million) to boost output of lithium-ion batteries for laptop computers.
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Troubled Japanese electronics  maker Sanyo Electric Co. said on Friday it would shoulder with  China's Lenovo Group the cost of recalling 205,000 Sanyo-made  laptop battery packs that can overheat.
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(InfoWorld) - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) is recalling several thousand laptop computer battery packs because mechanical problems with the pack's latch could lead to overheating of the battery. The recall applies to around 6,000 battery packs that were shipped with its CF-W4G Let's Note W4 laptop computers in April and May of 2005, the company said Tuesday. The recall only applies to machines shipped in Japan. The problems arise if the owner sometimes drops the machine or sets it down on a table very roughly, said Akira Kadota, a spokesman for the company in Tokyo. On such occasions the small spring in the latch can penetrate the battery pack and cause a short circuit that leads to overheating, he said. Panasonic has documented two cases to-date of this happening with the battery packs under recall. "This is veryÂ different from the Sony case," he said referring to recent recalls by Dell and Apple ComputerÂ of almost 6 million battery packs containing Sony-made cells. Sony said the presence of metallic particles inside the battery meant there is a chance that the cells could overheat and catch fire under certain circumstances. The cells in the batteries under recall were not made by Sony or Panasonic, said Kadota. He wouldn't name the battery maker. Panasonic has posted details of the recall on the Internet in Japanese at:Â http://askpc.panasonic.co.jp/info/info_w4.html.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Matsushita boosts production of heatproof batteries for laptops following worries about overheating.
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Japanese electronics company Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. and computer vendor Lenovo Group Ltd. are discussing how to pay for the recall of over 200,000 laptop PC batteries, but have agreed to share the burden.
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Reissuing release to remove NASDAQ ticker "SANYY" from first sentence.  The corrected release reads:  SANYO ELECTRIC ANNOUNCES STATEMENT REGARDING BATTERY PACK RECALL BY  LENOVO  SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.
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(InfoWorld) - Hitachi Ltd. joins most of the leading notebook computer makers in recalling batteries from Sony Corp. that are known to overheat and potentially cause fires. The recall is one of the smaller ones, affecting 16,000 units only sold in Japan. The Hitachi Flora 210W and Flora Se210 laptops ship with the Sony batteries, Hitachi said. Hitachi doesn't use the batteries in any other products and hasn't received any complaints from users about problems with them. Hitachi's recall pales compared to Dell Inc.'s, which was the first and affected 4.1 million of the Sony batteries. Apple Computer Inc. recalled 1.8 million batteries and Toshiba Corp., Lenovo Group Ltd., IBM Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. have recalled hundreds of thousands each.Â Combined, the companies have recalled more than 7.9 million batteries. Hewlett-Packard Co. is one of the few remaining large computer makers not to issue a recall, claiming that an HP system configuration prevents overheating. Acer Inc. is considering issuing a recall but is still investigating the issue. Sony is hammering out a plan with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to launchÂ a global replacement programÂ for the batteries. Sony blames the problem, which affects some lithium ion batteries, on tiny metal particles that might come in contact with parts of the battery, possibly triggering a short circuit. Normally, the battery should power off when that happens, Sony said, but in some cases the short circuit could cause overheating and flames. Â
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Capacity at Japanese plant to increase 7.5% to meet demand from digital camera, cell phone makers. TOKYO  - Toshiba Corp.
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Another laptop goes foom Toshiba Japan today expanded its notebook-battery recall programme, adding half-a-dozen more models to the list of laptops it wants owners to use only on mains power until new batteries can be sent out to them.â¦
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Hitachi Ltd.  said on Friday it will recall 16,000 batteries made by Sony Corp.  for laptop computers, joining a growing list of PC makers recalling Sony batteries.
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Japanese electronics company Sanyo and computer vendor Lenovo are discussing how to pay for the recall of over 200,000 laptop PC batteries.
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(InfoWorld) - Fujitsu'sÂ recall of defective batteriesÂ will affect 287,000 notebook PCs, including 63,000 in Japan, the company said Wednesday. Fujitsu last week became the fifth recent PC vendor to recall batteries using lithium-ion cells made by Sony Energy Devices. A manufacturing defect can cause those cells to short circuit, overheating and in some cases catching fire. So Fujitsu has asked both users of certain notebook PCs and dealers with unsold computers in their inventory to return the affected batteries, said Sean Nemoto, investor relations manager for Fujitsu. Dell started the rush when it announced on Aug. 14 it wouldÂ recall 4.1 million batteries, following complaints from a handful of customers that their PCs had burst into flames. Other vendors quickly followed, includingÂ Apple Computer,Â Toshiba,Â Lenovo Group, IBM, andÂ Fujitsu. Together they have recalled 7.9 million batteries. Sony has beenÂ pushing vendors to recall its batteriesÂ even in the absence of customer complaints. Sony said Thursday that it was working with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall any remaining defective cells in notebooks worldwide. The move will not affect other types of consumer electronics that use lithium-ion cells, such as cameras and music players. Notebook vendors insist that the number of actual fires is very small, amounting to just fractions of a percent compared to the many millions of batteries recalled. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has counted 47 incidents of smoke or fire coming from notebook computers from January 2001 to August 2006. Sony and the vendors continue to debate whether the fault lies solely in battery cell manufacturing, or also in the design of notebook PCs. Sony designs its batteries to shut down after a short circuit, but in certain occasions they will continue to overheat. "The potential for this to occur can be affected by variations in the system configurations found in different notebook computers," the company said. Hewlett-Packard said Monday that its customers had not experienced any overheated batteries thanks to redundant safety features used in HP notebooks. "Because of HP's PC system configuration, HP notebooks using Sony battery cells are not prone to overheating issues that have recently been observed," the companies said in a joint statement. However, other vendors insist their designs are also safe. Dell's recall is careful to state that "only the described batteries are subject to this recall and not the notebook computers themselves."
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TOKYO/SHANGHAI  - Troubled Japanese electronics  maker Sanyo Electric Co.  said on Friday it would  shoulder with China's Lenovo Group  the cost of  recalling 205,000 Sanyo-made laptop battery packs that can  overheat.
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As&#160;One Laptop Per Child prepares to ship its highly anticipated XO laptops in two weeks, it is developing a &quot;supercharger,&quot; a mass battery recharger that will draw power from cows and yo-yos to help the laptops run longer.The supercharger is a box that will charge 15 batteries at a time, said Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer for OLPC.The supercharger complements other environmentally friendly battery charging technologies being used or under development for the XO laptop, Jepsen said. Users can hook up handcranks, cows, yo-yos, foot pedals and solar panels to the box to recharge batteries.Last week OLPC said it was designing a cow-powered generator through a dynamo with a system of belts and pulleys using cattle to generate power.A typical charge cycle for a laptop battery should be about three hours, Jepsen said. Groups of children will be able to share batteries.Currently in design, the supercharger will be ready for manufacturing next year, Jepsen said.A laptop&#39;s mileage depends on its usage, so OLPC designed an environmentally friendly laptop that could work with a rugged, low-power battery, Jepsen said. The laptop&#39;s specially designed lithium-ferro phosphate battery consumes between 2 watts to 8 watts depending on usage, Jepsen said. It lasts five years and works in environments up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius), Jepsen said.The XO batteries do not work on normal laptops, which can sap up to 40 watts of power depending on usage, Jepsen said.The XO is also the first laptop that uses only alternative energy, Jepsen said. Low-cost solar panels are great as a power option where there is plenty of sunlight, Jepsen said. Energy is especially scare in developing nations, so the laptop will hopefully pass on energy preservation lessons, which could help preserve battery life in the XO, Jepsen said.The laptop goes into manufacturing this week after three years of design experimentation and attempts to reduce manufacturing cost. It will first be offered in two weeks to consumers in the Give 1 Get 1 program, in which two laptops can be purchased for about US$400, with a user getting one laptop and the other being donated.&quot;We&#39;re exhausted, but exhilarated,&quot; Jepsen said.REFERENCES:OLPC experiments with cow-powered laptops ... seriously, Oct. 24, 2007
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Japanese electronics maker Fujitsu Ltd.   6702.T said on Wednesday it would recall 287,000 notebook PC   batteries made by Sony Corp. 6758.T, bringing the number of   Sony batteries recalled to more than 7.5 million.
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(InfoWorld) - Toshiba is recalling a small batch of laptop batteries that could overheat and burn users, a company spokesman said Thursday. About 5,100 Sony-made lithium-ion batteries are defective, spanning 10 models of Toshiba computers, some of which are essentially the same model but carry a different name in different regions, said Manuel Linnig, Toshiba spokesman in Germany. The latest recall involves a different type of battery than in September 2006 when more than 8 million rechargeable lithium-ion batteries made by Sony wereÂ recalled. Those batteries, which were in a range of laptops from Apple, Lenovo Group, Fujitsu Computer Systems, Gateway, Sony Electronics, and Toshiba, suffered a defect that could cause them to short circuit. Most recently, oneÂ laptop caught fireÂ in May due to a battery that had not been replaced. In a worse-case scenario, the defective batteries in this latest recall could cause burns to users, as well as damage the computer, Linnig said. "We had some reports coming from Japan and Australia where they simply got too warm, but nobody got injured, luckily," he said. The batteries were made around December 2005 and installed in laptops between January and April 2006. Five models were sold in Japan, with five others sold outside Japan, Linnig said. Toshiba plans to put a utility application on its Web site in the next day or so that checks if a laptop is vulnerable and informs the consumer, Linnig said. For those who don't want to download an application, a document will be posted so users can identify their batteries by serial number. Affected users can then fill out an online form, and Toshiba will send them a postage-paid envelope to return the defective battery, and the company will then mail them out a new one, Linnig said. Â
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NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi say that Sanyo-made batteries may overheat and catch fire.