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Lenovo and IBM Corporation have announced the voluntary recall of some
526,000 lithium-ion batteries used in ThinkPad notebook computers
worldwide due to the latest problem with batteries made by Sony Corp., the
Washington- based Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said Thursday.
IBM Corp., based in Armonk, New York, and Lenovo (United States) Inc.
of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, recalled the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used in
ThinkPad computers because they may cause overheating, posing a fire
hazard to consumers.
About 168,500 of the batteries were sold in
the U.S., while the rest were distributed worldwide, according to the CPSC
statement.
The CPSC warned that consumers should stop using recalled products
immediately and contact Lenovo to receive a replacement battery,
free-of-charge. Till now , Lenovo has received one confirmed report of a
battery overheating and causing a fire that damaged the notebook computer.
The incident, which occurred within an airport terminal as the user was
boarding an airplane, caused enough smoking and sparking that a
fire extinguisher was used to
put it out. There was minor property damage and no injuries were reported.
According to the CPSC, the recalled batteries were sold with, or sold
separately to be used with, the following ThinkPad notebook computers
between February 2005 and September 2006: T Series (T43, T43p, T60); R
Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e); and X Series (X60, X60s). They were
distributed by IBM until Lenovo, the Chinese computer maker, bought IBM's
personal computer division in May 2005.
It was the fourth recall in recent months involving Sony batteries
believed to be defective. In August, Dell asked customers to return 4.1
million faulty laptop
batteries and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries
worldwide, warning they could catch fire. Last week, Toshiba said it was
recalling 340,000 laptop batteries due to a problem that caused the
laptops to sometimes run out of power.
(Agencies) |
