Toshiba laptop goes up in smoke
Sony-made battery was covered by last year's recall
Toshiba has no doubt left Sony feeling a little hot under the collar after announcing that yet another of the laptop battery packs made by its Japanese rival has burst into flames, nuking the notebook good and proper.
Although Toshiba kept specific details of the blaze close to its chest, the company confirmed that the incident took place last month and was caused by a short-circuit within the battery.
Such fires are thought to be caused by irregularities within lithium-ion batteries. Sony has said that - in this case - the fire was caused by microscopic metal particles getting inside the battery and causing it to short-circuit.
Toshiba added that the battery was one which should have been replaced under the swap-out scheme it embarked upon last year following a spate of fires caused by malfunctioning Sony-made batteries.
Toshiba warned customers who have not yet returned batteries included in the recall to do so pronto. The recall is a global one.
Laptop battery fires have now become a widespread talking point and multiple vendors have already been caught out by similar incidents, including Lenovo, Fujitsu and Apple.
The scale of the problem has even prompted the U.S. Department of Transportation to begin warning passengers to take precautions while flying with a laptop or mobile phone.
Panasonic, meanwhile, has turned this fear into a sales opportunity by designing a "safe" lithium-ion rechargeable battery, which works by inserting a layer of heat-resistant insulating material to prevent fire-starting internal short-circuits.
COMMENTS
toshiba wasn't too good about my laptop replacement batteries
On November 30th 2006, a co-worker and myself used toshiba's little windows app to determine if our M5 batteries need replacing, and both did. The app directed us to a website where we filled out a form and submitted a request. Toshiba got the request, said 4-6 weeks for delivery.
5 months later, no sign of the batteries. So I ran the app again and filled the form out again to see if the first one got lost or something, and the web site said I had already filled it out and it rejected the 2nd request. So I called Toshiba, got bounced around a bit(there is no direct number for their battery replacement dept for some reason). And they looked up my serial# confirmed that I filed the request on 11/30/06, and said they were expecting a replacement to arrive by 12/1/06, but due to some supply problem(that lasted ~5 months?) the replacement did not get sent. They said they would expedite a new battery to me, and a manager would be calling me as well(I assume to apologize or something). The battery arrived a few days later, the manager has yet to call(more than a month ago now I think).
The 2nd battery is in a laptop that my boss uses[also an M5],(the co-worker that used it last year has another laptop now), I told him what he needed to do to get it replaced, since the request for that laptop was filed on 11/30 as well and no replacement yet. I don't think he has bothered to call yet.
I was in no real hurry to get the replacement, the other battery wasn't doing so hot anymore, so I decided to see last month if I could get the replacement so I could have a fresh battery, otherwise I probably would still be lazy and not having bothered to do it. if it bursts into flames I'll just RMA it, afterall toshiba has on record our requests to exchange the batteries and they haven't come through(they did on my occasion because I followed up, but otherwise likely would not of).
Check Software?
There was talk on the HAL mailing list of having a recalled flag on batteries that would match certain metrics. Is there no similar solution for windows (dare I say it Mac) machines?
