Dell has asked the owners of 35,000 Inspiron, Precision and Lattitude laptops to send back their batteries. According to the PC maker, the batteries in question may be faulty. If they are, they could overheat and catch fire.

As yet, no one has been injured by overly hot batteries or by fires the power packs may have caused, Dell said.

The batteries were sold between 5 October 2004 and 13 October 2005 with Precision M20 and M70 machines; Inspiron 510M, 600M, 6000, 8600, 9200, 9300 and XPS Gen 2; and Latitude D410, D505, D510, D600, D610, D800 and D810 computers. They were also sold as standalone batteries, or offered as replacements for failed batteries under warranty or some other service package.

Users who may own such a battery are advised by Dell to stop using them immediately and to remove them.

To identify a battery covered by the replacement programme, look at the bar-code on the unit. The second block of characters will include one of the following codes: 3K590, C5340, X5308, F5132, U5882, U5867, 6P922, C5446 and C2603. For more information, visit Dell's battery replacement website.

In October, HP asked for 135,000 notebook batteries to be returned, citing the same overheating and potential risk mentioned by Dell. The same goes for the 250,000 batteries Fujitsu Siemens asked to be returned in June and the 128,000 batteries Apple wanted back in May. ®