Total recall

Recently, a Dell notebook exploded in the middle of a conference in Osaka, Japan. Since then, many such incidents have been brought to the notice of the manufacturer. This has forced it to recall about 4.1 million notebook batteries (from notebooks bought between April 2004 and July 2006), which were found to be the prime cause of these incidents.

Dell while issuing the recall also said that the batteries were manufactured by Sony and as a result of quality control issues, other notebook manufacturers might now be forced to recall their batteries as well.

For the enterprise, this could become a major issue related to decision-making. With the same lithium-ion batteries being used by many other notebook manufacturers and cellular phone manufacturers, organisations may face a dilemma as to which vendor to finalise and how to ensure that the batteries or other accessories supplied along with the main product will not prove to be defective or harmful.

Meanwhile Apple has said that it would ‘look into’ issues related to its notebooks being overheated.