Apple Recalls 28,000 Faulty Batteries Sold with 15-inch PowerBook
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Apple has had to recall up to 28,000 notebook batteries that were sold for use with their 15-inch PowerBook. Apple reports that faulty batteries sold between January 2004 and August 2004 can overheat and pose a fire hazard.
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Lenovo Group Ltd. plans to recall 205,000 laptop batteries, a move prompted by complaints from four customers who said that the batteries overheated after being dropped.
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InfoWorld - Apple does not agree that a manufacturing defect caused power failures in an iBook G4 laptop sold in Denmark, but it refunded the customer&#39;s money, said the country&#39;s Consumer Complaints Board.
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(InfoWorld) - Apple has admitted that a manufacturing defect caused power failures in an iBook G4 laptop sold in Denmark and refunded the customer's money, said the country's Consumer Complaints Board. The case is justÂ one of many concerning the iBook G4Â that the board has heard about, Frederik Navne Boesgaard, the complaints board's legal adviser, said Wednesday. Apple also faces a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California concerning a similar problem with the iBook G4. In a complaint filed on Nov. 7, plaintiff Alan Vitt said the computers' motherboards fail at an abnormally high rate. Apple is seeking to have the complaint dismissed -- its filing on that motion is due Thursday -- with the next hearing in the case set for Oct. 4. The Danish complaints board, part of the government-funded National Consumer Agency, published a technical report on faulty iBooks in May. The study found solder joints around a voltage regulator were flawed in such a way as to deteriorate each time the computers were turned on or off, until they would no longer start up. However, using a clamp to apply pressure to the computers' casing, next to the trackpad, closed up the broken joints and allowed the computer to start -- a clear sign of an original design flaw, the study concluded. In response, Apple submitted its own technical report saying that the flaw was not due to cycling the power on and off, but this was not enough to sway the board's decision. Two weeks ago, the board challenged Apple to concede the point and refund the customer's money, or take their customer to court. Apple paid up, said Navne Boesgaard. The complaints board is handling four such cases, and owners of faulty iBook G4s continue to come forward: 15 more have called him in recent days, he said. The faulty iBooks were among the first notebooks using the G4 processor that Apple produced, and had an opaque white casing like their G3 predecessors. The machines examined, the 800MHz Model 9164LL/A and the 1GHz Model 9426LL/A, were introduced in April 2004 and discontinued in October of that year. The board received the complaints between April and November 2006. A spokeswoman for Apple in the U.K. said she believed the case had been settled, but was unable to comment further. Â
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Thousands of rechargeable batteries for use in Apple&#39;s Powerbook G4 laptop are being recalled. The batteries can overheat, posing a fire hazard. However, no injuries have been reported.
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Lenovo says it has found yet another problem with some of its batteries and has recalled more than 200,000 of them worldwide.
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IBM Corp. is recalling 526,000 laptop batteries worldwide made by Sony Corp., the latest in a series of problems with Sony batteries, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Thursday.
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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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Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O) has agreed to recall about 28,000 batteries used in its 15-inch PowerBook G4 laptop computers, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday.
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Chinese computer maker Lenovo and IBM announced the worldwide recall of more than 500,000 laptop batteries made by Sony after a ThinkPad notebook caught fire at Los Angeles airport.
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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
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Toshiba is recalling worldwide 340,000 batteries made by Sony Corp. for its laptops, the latest in a series of embarrassing battery problems for Sony.
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Apple is recalling about 28,000 batteries that shipped this year in its PowerBook G4 portable computers.
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IBM, maker of the popular Thinkpad notebook computers, released a statement announcing the recall of 553,000 notebook computer power adapters.
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Apple Computer Inc.  will  recall 1.8 million lithium-ion notebook PC batteries after nine  overheated, the second major recall in the past 10 days  involving battery cells made by Sony Corp.
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Apple finds itself in a peculiar situation after a MacBook in Australia catches fire, apparently from a malfunctioning battery. However, the battery was not on the list of recalled units.
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Apple is voluntarily recalling certain lithium ion rechargeable batteries that were sold worldwide from January 2004 through August 2004 for use with 15-inch PowerBook G4 (Aluminum) notebook computers. The affected batteries could overheat, posing a fire hazard. [Aug 19]