FOUR PROMINENT computer manufacturers have issued a recall on a range of laptops sold in Ireland after the Sony-supplied battery packs were found to pose a fire hazard.
Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Acer have announced product recalls on several laptop models powered by the Sony 2.15Ah lithium ion cell battery.
This follows 40 cases of overheating, 13 of them in Europe, including four incidents where users suffered minor burns and 21 cases of minor damage from fires and overheating.
Sony said the recall affected about 100,000 battery packs worldwide. This was made up of 74,000 notebook PCs sold by HP and 14,400 by Toshiba.
The remainder were sold with laptops from Dell, Acer and the Lenovo Group.
However, Lenovo said its product recall did not affect Ireland as the particular batteries were only sold with 450 PCs in China.
Sony blamed the fault on factory changes dating back to 2004, which it believes affected the quality of some battery cells.
"In addition, there were some incidents that may have involved a raw material flaw," the Toyko-based company said in a statement.
The PC manufacturers affected by the recall have pledged to replace the battery packs free of charge.
They have also set up battery-recall websites, which can be accessed from their main online portals, to advise customers of the models affected and how they can replace the packs.
Toshiba Ireland urged customers who had an affected battery to stop using it immediately and remove it from their computer.
It also recommended that customers participate in its battery-replacement programme as soon as possible.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Ireland said the battery packs were shipped with notebook PCs manufactured and sold from December 2004 to June 2006.
However, it said only a limited number of these products are believed to have been sold in Ireland.
A spokeswoman said the company was currently using a variety of means to communicate this potential safety issue to its customers, including a HP replacement-program website; customer letters, in-store retail signage and e-mails to registered customers.
Dell Ireland said the battery recall affected fewer than 300 units sold worldwide and that the impact in Ireland was minimal.
Sony was forced to recall 9.6 million lithium-ion batteries in 2006 at a cost of €300 million after a similar manufacturing problem caused defects.
The company also recalled 438,000 of its Vaio laptops last month due to concerns about overheating batteries.
