Four million laptops recalled amid Dell fire hazard fears

MORE than four million laptops are at the centre of a global alert over batteries that can overheat and catch fire.

Dell issued the biggest product recall in computer history after video footage showed a laptop bursting into flames during a conference in Osaka, Japan.

Similar incidents have been reported across the world. Dell said it had been told of six instances of batteries overheating, causing damage to furniture and belongings but no personal injuries.

Consumers are being urged to stop using the batteries immediately and to get in touch to obtain replacements.

The company said yesterday it was recalling 4.1 million batteries for use in Latitude, Inspiron and Precision laptops. The batteries are also used by other companies including Apple, which said it was looking into the risk posed.

Dell blames the problem on the lithium-ion batteries made by Sony Energy Devices. This type of battery has been in use since the mid-Nineties and is often found in devices such as mobile phones and digital music players.

It is estimated the recall could cost Dell more than £157million, without taking into account damage to the firm's reputation.

Spokesman Ira Williams said: "In rare cases, a short-circuit could cause the battery to overheat, causing a risk of smoke and fire. It happens in rare cases, but we opted to take this broad action immediately."

Fears surrounding laptops emerged this month as pictures of some of the charred machines circulated on the internet.

One man from Singapore told an Australian newspaper how his laptop caught fire as he was working late in his office.

He said: "White smoke began to pour out of the machine, completely filling up the room, and there were flames coming up the sides of the laptop."

The recall involves 18 per cent of Dell's 22 million notebook computers sold between April 2004 and last month.

This is the third recall of Dell notebook batteries in the past five years.

In December it recalled 22,000 notebook computer batteries over similar fears. The company also recalled 284,000 batteries in 2001.

It comes as a major blow to Dell, which has recently lost ground to its leading rival Hewlett-Packard.

The words Dell and "Made in Japan" or "Made in China" or "Battery cell made in Japan, assembled in China" are printed on the back of the batteries. Dell stressed that the short-circuiting problem was rare.

A Sony spokesman said the two companies had studied problems with the battery packs for more than a month, after getting reports of about half-a-dozen fires or smoking laptops in the US.

Dell is urging customers to check via its website if their batteries are subject to the recall.

Customers whose battery identification numbers match those being recalled will be automatically connected to a replacement order form.

Affected battery packs should be returned to Dell for disposal. The company will supply free replacement batteries to affected customers.

Can we take that back?

High-profile product recall alerts to consumers in recent years have ranged from foodstuffs to cars:

• In 1990 Perrier was involved in a massive worldwide recall of its products after traces of the poisonous chemical benzene were discovered in its water.

• Millions of products were taken off supermarket shelves last February after the contaminated Sudan 1 dye was used in a batch of Crosse & Blackwell Worcester sauce.

• General Motors recalled nearly 200,000 pick-ups, vans and sports utility vehicles after a possible problem was discovered in the braking system.

• In June Cadbury Schweppes, the confectionery giant, withdrew more than one million of its products after traces of salmonella were discovered.

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Rev F makes AMD competitive on server market against Intel

ABOUT cpu.The launch of Rev F, a squad-core Opteron processor by AMD, makes it competitive in the server market against server manufacturer gaint Intel.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)'s new Opteron claims to have such competitiveness as less-energy consumption and compatibility.

As more energy creates more heat, bigger fans are required to keep the computer cool. Energy compution is a key technology that the server manufactures are concerned. The Rev F version consumes less power and allows faster access to memory, according to Mike Feibus, founder of TechKnowledge Strategies Inc., a market research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

To the compatibility of the squad-core chip, Steve Demski, marketing manager of AMD's Opteron business was very confident. "You can go to a new generation of chips without changing any of your software," he said.

Both Intel's latest product, the Xeon 5100, and AMD's newest Opteron chip are dual core processors. AMD conceded that Intel will be first to market later this year with the first quad-core chips, but said it will have its version to market by the middle of next year, the Journal Technology said.

"We think we have a solution that's worth waiting for," Demski said. "Six months is pretty quick in the industry. We're not concerned about that impacting our business."

AMD technology was reportedly to be used in many key server manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Dell Inc. Dell. However, the manufactures are "a bit vague about when they are going to get Rev F machines into the field," ITJungle was quoted as saying.

AMD increased its share of the global market for servers to 26 percent in the second quarter, up from about 11 percent a year earlier, according to Mercury Research.

AMD's new chip will range in price from 749 U.S. dollars to 2,149. Enditem

Dell share fall by 1.6% on recall of batteries

Shares of Dell Inc. fell 1.6 percent in Europe on Tuesday. Late Monday, the world's largest personal computer maker said it will recall 4.1 million notebook computer batteries because they could overheat and catch fire. Shares of the company were trading at 21.01 dollars on the Inet electronic brokerage network before the opening bell on Tuesday.

In this morning the stock fell as much as 1.6 percent to the equivalent of 20.90 U.S. dollars in Germany after closing at 21.24 dollars on the Nasdaq on Monday. They traded at 20.93 dollars as of 11:14 a.m. in Frankfurt.

This will be the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.

The recalled batteries were used in 2.7 million computers sold in the United States and 1.4 million sold overseas. The total is about 18 percent of Dell's notebook production during the period in question.

Dell has reported six instances since December in which notebooks overheated or erupted in flames. There were property damage, but no injuries or death. Dell said the problems were a result of a manufacturing defect in batteries made by Sony.

Sony on Tuesday said it would pay some of the costs involved in Dell's recall of millions of notebook computer batteries made by the Japanese company.

"Dell will pay some of the costs, Sony will pay some of the costs," a spokesman of the Japanese consumer electronics group told the Financial Times.

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International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge called on Friday for greater cooperation between governments and sports federations after two high-profile positive drugs tests by U.S. athletes.