It started with Dell, then continued with Apple, Toshiba and now also IBM/Lenovo. Exploding notebook batteries (and hopefully not while you had one notebook sitting on your lap). So today Sony announced (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aIkjp2prBNGU&refer=japan) the worldwide recall of its notebook batteries.

This raises two important questions:

Is the Sony Reader battery affected by this?
What about other gadgets or battery manufacturers? Are they safe to use?


Think about your future. About your plans to have children. This is an important issue.

I have an IBM Thinkpad and it falls within the time-frame (February 2005 and September 2006). However, according to the Lenovo Battery Program (http://www.lenovo.com/batteryprogram), my battery is safe to use. Does it make me feel safer? Not really.

I'm more concerned with airport security treating Reader as laptop and insisting on "removing" battery before boarding a plane.

Also, since Reader's battery is not user replaceable, in case of a recall, we will have to send whole thing to Sony.

No Sony laptops have had this problem until now, so I guess Sony saved the good ones for themselves.

No Sony laptops have had this problem until now, so I guess Sony saved the good ones for themselves.

:laugh4:

I'm pretty sure the Reader doesn't use a laptop battery -- they weigh more than the whole Reader does!

I'm pretty sure the Reader doesn't use a laptop battery -- they weigh more than the whole Reader does!
The previous poster's argument goes more like, Sony did not recall any batteries for their laptops yet, so don't worry about the Sony Reader.

Just for the record, Dell is recalling another 100'000 notebook batteries (http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/09/29/dell_battery_recall_update/).

According to Sony, the cause for this nightmare is the presence of metallic particles inside the battery which causes a chance that the cells could overheat and catch fire under certain circumstances.

I am not sure why this could not happen to non-notebook batteries as well - however, as Nathan correctly pointed out, the battery of the Reader is a lot less powerful, so probably also less harmful in the worst event.

recently in the c't (german computer tech magazine) was an article about the battery explosions. Basically Sony tried to get more power packed in cells with the same size. That led them to make the separator thinner. The occurance of metal particles in the production process seems to be normal, but together with the thinner separator, it comes to problems.

The particles can pierce through the separator and therefore short cutting the cell, which then would overheat. The rest is history.

So I would think that could happen to every Lithium-based battery pack coming from Sony, especially if it is high capacity in small space.

Think about your plans to have children?

What does that have to do with anything? And what if I don't plan to breed? *laugh*