| Toshiba recalls about 10,000 Sony-made batteries overseas
TOKYO -- Japanese electronics company Toshiba Corp. began recalling about 10,000 Sony-made batteries for laptop computers in Japan and overseas, company officials said Thursday. Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Omori said there have been three cases in which the batteries caught fire between September and June. There were no injuries from the three fires; two in Japan and one in Australia, he said. The battery models to be recalled are different from those involved in a massive recall of Sony Corp. lithium-ion battery packs last year. Sony announced that recall after it was found that they could overheat and catch fire. In the latest case, company investigations found batteries manufactured on December 3, 2005, were a cause of the problems, and there were about 5,100 of them sold in Japan, the U.S., Europe, Australia, China, the spokesman said.
Toshiba Recalls Sony-Made Batteries
Japanese electronics company Toshiba Corp. began recalling about 10,000 Sony-made batteries for laptop computers in Japan and overseas, company officials said Thursday. Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Omori said there have been three cases in which the batteries caught fire between September and June. There were no injuries from the three fires; two in Japan and one in Australia, he said. .
Police blotter
A PlayStation 2 console and a laptop computer were stolen June 29 from a home in the 2000 block of West 135th Street. A window screen was cut to gain entry. A home's glass patio door was shattered June 30 in the 13000 block of Wood Street. Power drills, a power saw and a car radio were stolen June 30 from a home in the 2300 block of Walnut Street. A window was forced open to gain entry. An apartment window was shattered July 1 in the 2000 block of Broadway. Two cement lion statues were stolen July 2 from a home's front yard in the 12000 block of Artesian Avenue. An 8-week-old pit bull was stolen July 2 from a home's yard in the 2200 block of DesPlaines Street. A 2007 Ford Focus was stolen July 2 in the 11900 block of Western Avenue.
The Line Between Laptops and PDAs Gets Fuzzier
Fujitsu is announcing two new devices today -- an ultramobile PC with a 5.6-inch display, and an ultralight tablet/laptop PC with a 12.1-inch WXGA screen. They are nifty devices that underscore the movement in not just one market, but two, because they come just days after IDC reported that the PDA market has dropped 42% since last year. The handwriting has been on the wall for a while. Dell dropped development of its Axim line of Pocket PC devices in April. When I looked at the Palm Web site yesterday I noted with sadness that the LifeDrive has disappeared. (Was I the only person anywhere who bought one?) What's happened is obvious. PDAs are being squeezed into extinction by smartphones from one side, and UMPCs from the other. The smartphones do most of what a PDA does (if arguably not very well), and the UMPCs do something a PDA arguably can't -- they can browse the Web.
News Brief: Overheating Cell Phone Batteries Highlight Continued Need for Battery Manufacturing Vigilance, says ...
The continuing issue of overheating lithium ion batteries underscores the need for the electronics industry to conduct rigorous testing to protect businesses and consumers, especially in view of changing demands from consumers for increasingly smaller portable devices, says Info-Tech Research Group. A year after the world's largest laptop computer battery recalls by multiple manufacturers took place due to overheating batteries, and a laptop computer battery recall by Toshiba this month, Nokia has recalled up to 46 million mobile cell phone batteries in what would constitute the largest consumer electronics recall ever. .
|
