WSJ stands for Wall street journal!
WSJ confirms massive Dell battery recall
4,163,495 potentially explosive cells recalled
By INQUIRER newsdesk: Tuesday 15 August 2006, 00:34
AS WE EXCLUSIVELY revealed earlier, Dell is to recall more than
four million notebook computer batteries to allay consumers'
concerns of their laptop bursting into flames.
Documents seen exclusively by the INQUIRER say the computer maker
will issue a recall of FOUR million 163 thousand 495 batteries. The
Consumer Product Safety Commission says recall is the largest
computer-related incident in the agency's history.
Dell says the batteries affected were made by Sony.
Dell seeks to blame Sony over batterygate
By Theo Valich: Tuesday 15 August 2006, 01:51
THE CITY OF SPLIT is a tourist city currently over-run by several
thousand Americans. While eating the fish at famous fish diner
Sumica (direct English translation is small forest - local meaning
is a certain crop of hair on top of Venus hill), we had the
opportunity to discuss the matter of exploding laptops with an
anonymous bloke from Dell.
Between reading the powerpointish slides and eating the delightful
Sparus Aurata, we managed to uncover some surprising facts about
the recall.
Dell reckons it chose the Sony Corporation to deliver a huge batch
of batteries because it deemed it trustworthy.
But now, after the INQUIRER posted pictures of one such cell
exploding mid-conference in Japan, Dell wants to pass the buck and
blame Sony for its public relations nightmare.
The recall starts at entry-level notebooks and reaches up to the
high-end XPS series, in all of its iterations. All of the batteries
were delivered between April 1st, 2004 to July 18th, 2006. Some are
evidently faulty and may cause a real messy situation for
unsuspecting notebook user.
The following models are subject
of voluntary battery recall:
Latitude D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D800, D810
Inspiron 6000, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 500m, 510m, 600m,
6400, E1505, 700m,710m, 9400, E1705
Precision M20, M60, M70 and M90 mobile workstations; and
XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170 and M1710
The cost of this recall goes well into hundreds of millions of
dollars. Whether Dell will be able to hit Sony with a claim is
unclear. At any rate, we can't imagine Mikey Dell having a decent
night's sleep tonight.
Our source confirmed that the celebrated INQUIRER story realised
all the darkest fears in Dell, and that the company went into
overdrive to track down what was wrong with that series.
But the number of models with a potential problem exceeded all
expectations.
And now the firm is recalling all four million 163 thousand of them
in order to save its blushes. Sheesh! ยต