By Martyn Williams
October 31, 2008

Three of the biggest laptop computer makers are recalling certain batteries because of a risk they may overheat and catch fire. Sony Corp. made the batteries. The recall mirrors, yet appears a lot smaller, than a similar one that occurred two years ago. This time, around 100,000 batteries are affected, a fraction of the 9.6 million recalled in 2006.

Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Toshiba Corp. have already issued recalls for the batteries that were used in their products, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said "consumers should stop using recalled products immediately." The batteries in question were manufactured between October 2004 and June 2005, and there have been about 40 incidents reportedly worldwide of overheating to date, Sony said today.

Most of the incidents are believed to be the result of manufacturing-line adjustments made during the period that may have affected some batteries, Sony said. In addition, some may have been caused by raw material flaws. Of the 100,000 batteries affected, around 35,000 were used in laptops shipped in the U.S. By far the greatest number, about 32,000, were shipped with HP laptops.

The maker said it is recalling batteries that have a bar-code label beginning with A0, L0, L1 or GC that were shipped with HP Pavilion dv1000, dv8000 and zd8000 models; Compaq Presario v2000 and v2400 machines; and HP Compaq nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230,nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120 and nx9600 computers.