Battery Recall?

[mybellyisempty]

Dell is recalling batteries made by Sony.

Anyone know if any Sony-made batteries for IBM are being recalled?

[ParzanM]

hey
ye i heard this too. wouldnt the batteries made for Dell and Ibm be different. Different electrical requierments and stuff like that?

just what i was thinking
ParzanM

[chan_man]

There is a story on the New York Times on this, at the end, there was a statement from Lenovo about the batteries made for Lenovo are different...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/techn ... r=homepage

[snife]

What ThinkPads even have Sony batteries - all recent ones (ie since 2004) I can see use Sanyo or Panasonic

[mybellyisempty]

I want to think my old T42 had a sony battery.

I know the 6 cell in my T43 is a Sanyo, but I'm not sure what my 9 cells are, as I haven't opened them up yet.

[ParzanM]

I got a T42 and have a sanyo battery also.

[simms]

My T42 has a Sony battery - what can I do? It still holds about 48Wh, more than the 47Wh design spec...

[ParzanM]

im pretty sure you have nothing to worry about. i have read several reports on batteries/Dell/sony/fires and everyone states that the manufaturer(sony/sanyo) creates batteries specific for not only company(Dell/Ibm/Toshiba...) but for specific models too depending on electrical needs and size/capacity.

If you really are concerned I guess you could call lenovo and talk to them.


ParzanM

PS. Dont know if ibm/lenovo has ever had a major recall? can someone confirm/deny this?

[christopher_wolf]

There are only two major recalls in the, more, recent history of IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads; first, they recalled certain AC adapters made by Delta because they got hotter than what the QA labs at IBM deemed to be safe, no reports of injuries or anomalous behaviour from end-users, to my knowledge, but IBM recalled them anyway. Then there was the issue with the memory brackets on the T30 where they might come loose on some models, which IBM would have replaced for a user free of charge.

Sony Energy Division and their competitors generally act like contractors or special suppliers. The buyer, say IBM, requests procurement for a certain part and they send the engineering specs (and perhaps an engineer and/or procurement manager) to the supplier to work things out. Hence, each battery is different on the operational and design levels. *If* there was a problem with Sony made batteries in general, we would have heard about it by now one way or another.

Dell probably was the lowest bidder and had Sony make the cheapest battery they could. Dell has a habit of requesting such parts from their suppliers then cobbling them together without testing the final product as a *whole*. Now it is fine to tell, i.e. Dell to Sony, that the battery should have these specs and cost this much, etc. Sony would then have done their own QA testing before releasing the shipment and it might have also been checked, as a single part and not part of the final system it is intended to be in, by Dell as well. The problem then comes when the system is finally assembled; there has to be a certain level of the re-design-and-test cycle applied to the final system as a whole. Sure, the parts may work one by one on their own...but that doesn't mean you know how they behave as a cooperative whole in the final system. Which is why you have to give the final system a good amount of testing.


It may very well be that the internal power supply for the affected Dell laptops doesn't go well at all with the cheaper batteries that Dell got for them. Then why replace the battery and not the power system itself? Easy, it is quicker, easier, and far cheaper to send the customer a newer battery as opposed to ripping out their planars and giving them new ones that had to be quickly and fairly designed. So the real problem may not be with just the batteries themselves but, rather, how they might interact with the power supply in the laptops; you can never really tell unless you try it out for real, and that is *exactly* what Dell has to do.

[jhonyl]

You can check who made your battery with the 'battery information' (I have it running on the task bar, right click and select, and BTW I have a sony, it was considered to be the better one, when I got my laptop)

[DIGITALgimpus]

I don't think there's much of a chance the same defect is in Dell and IBM batteries.

If anything, Lenovo will have their QA team do some extra tests on batteries to cover their butts and prevent a potential lawsuit... if that turned up something questionable, then yes, there could be a recall.

Personally I'd say the odds are < 10%.

Remember: Li-Ion can behave this way. That's a negative of it's design. There's no way to 100% remove the risk. High energy in small size could mean trouble. But in general they are very safe. Don't forget there are billions of these batteries out there.

[christopher_wolf]

Yup; NiMH batteries can do the same thing. Any battery can, actually since they contain potential energy in the form of chemicals. Get water, a conjugate base or acid, or significant heat or cold near a battery and you could wind up with a potential hazard on your hands (literally).

I also don't think that the same problem could be found in the batteries that Sony makes for IBM/Lenovo.

[bfgun]

THIS i think take the cake.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32550

"...for the record, this is a Dell machine."

(look for the nice pics of the dell machine exploding)

[borez]

There are only two major recalls in the, more, recent history of IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads; first, they recalled certain AC adapters made by Delta because they got hotter than what the QA labs at IBM deemed to be safe, no reports of injuries or anomalous behaviour from end-users, to my knowledge, but IBM recalled them anyway. Then there was the issue with the memory brackets on the T30 where they might come loose on some models, which IBM would have replaced for a user free of charge.

Sony Energy Division and their competitors generally act like contractors or special suppliers. The buyer, say IBM, requests procurement for a certain part and they send the engineering specs (and perhaps an engineer and/or procurement manager) to the supplier to work things out. Hence, each battery is different on the operational and design levels. *If* there was a problem with Sony made batteries in general, we would have heard about it by now one way or another.

Dell probably was the lowest bidder and had Sony make the cheapest battery they could. Dell has a habit of requesting such parts from their suppliers then cobbling them together without testing the final product as a *whole*. Now it is fine to tell, i.e. Dell to Sony, that the battery should have these specs and cost this much, etc. Sony would then have done their own QA testing before releasing the shipment and it might have also been checked, as a single part and not part of the final system it is intended to be in, by Dell as well. The problem then comes when the system is finally assembled; there has to be a certain level of the re-design-and-test cycle applied to the final system as a whole. Sure, the parts may work one by one on their own...but that doesn't mean you know how they behave as a cooperative whole in the final system. Which is why you have to give the final system a good amount of testing.


It may very well be that the internal power supply for the affected Dell laptops doesn't go well at all with the cheaper batteries that Dell got for them. Then why replace the battery and not the power system itself? Easy, it is quicker, easier, and far cheaper to send the customer a newer battery as opposed to ripping out their planars and giving them new ones that had to be quickly and fairly designed. So the real problem may not be with just the batteries themselves but, rather, how they might interact with the power supply in the laptops; you can never really tell unless you try it out for real, and that is *exactly* what Dell has to do.

Well said, and logical too. This is one of the reasons why I will never get a Dell again.

My previous Dell Inspiron 3800's system board had burnt out due to some failure in the power protection circuit, and they just tried to downplay the entire thing - where it could have been a full blown explosion.

Not to mention that the Sony battery crapped out on me just slightly after 1 year.

[christopher_wolf]

I believe you as the battery, power management, *and* AC adapter have all started to act *extremely* funky on my Dell M60. First, I put in a 2nd battery into the Dell's bay, then it won't charge; OK, so I take it out...but then it starts draining the main battery while still on AC. Well, I will reboot. I boot back up and the main battery on the dell runs out of juice and it goes to hibernate. Turns out that, for some reason, that particular adapter and 2nd battery stopped the charging for the Dell M60's internal battery. To this day I haven't been able to get it to work correctly with that adapter.

The funny part is that that adapter is *exactly* the same model and output type as the one that powers the M60's dock. I swap them, and the Dell M60 accepts the adapter from the dock *but* the dock won't accept the power adapter from the M60. Same everything (or as so indicated) but they can't be swapped. I tried with a spare adapter from somebody else's old M60 that I knew worked...same problem with both the Dell M60 and the dock for it. Then I tried a working battery for the M60 from another system and the battery worked, but the M60 would either BSOD or not boot up with it....The only thing that remained constant was the Dell M60 itself.

I got all that grief because all I wanted to do was put a 2nd battery in the bay of the Dell M60; that is something I can hotswap through a 2nd HDD, the DVD/CD writer, and another battery on my T43 with.

[alexzabr]

Those few times I checked by battery info - it said my battery (regular 6-cells type) was made by Sony indeed.
So far, no problems, it doesn't approach to be any hotter then I would consider as normal, working on laps obviously feels somewhat warm but far from to be something to worry about (accept probably of warming up one of the most improtant parts of my body... ).
Even under quite heavy load for prolonged period of time (technical computing) the harddrive area (palmrest) feels noticeably warmer then the machine in general, fan kicks into any hearable mode fairly seldom anyway, so no problems so far (kicking on the wood...)..