Sony recalls 100,000 laptop batteries

The Japanese Electronics giant-Sony-on Friday said that it was cooperating in a recall of 2.15Ah lithium-ion cell batteries made in Japan and sold around the world in laptops made by HP(Hewlett Packard), Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and Acer . There have been 40 reports of overheating, in some cases involving smoke or flames, according to a company statement.

Sony-world's second largest Lithium-ion battery manufacturer after Sanyo- two years ago in a similar incident recalled nearly 9 million high-capacity batteries. The result? It affected the economy of all global competing PC manufacturers, and cost Sony close to $400 million! So, why hasn't Sony learned from its previous experiences? Beats me! That's the big question!

Sony stated that the faulty batteries were from the same subsidiary that made the batteries recalled two years ago, Sony Energy Devices in Tochigi, Japan. Sony said efforts to make manufacturing lines there more efficient appeared to have backfired, leading to substandard cells. A possible flaw in the metal foil for electrodes could also have led to overheating, the company said.

Dell and HP have taken immediate measures- HP has a website for its owners to check whether their batteries are defected, and Dell too has a similar website. This is definitely not good news for Sony.

Microsoft to stop selling XP today...

Microsoft is going to stop selling XP today, despite many harsh words and revolts from PC users and consumers who rebelled against being forced to move to XP's successor- the ill-fated bloat-ware Vista.

Once PC giants like Dell and Hewlett Packard(HP) have run out of stock of computers with XP pre-installed, users who cant live without XP will have to buy Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate and will have to legally "downgrade" to XP. As posted earlier on this very same blog, Microsoft will still continue to support it's six-year old all-time seller XP until 2009 and limited support till 2014- which is good news, or so I guess.

This ought to cheer up the ultra-portable lovers- XP will still be available for all ultra-portable gadgets like the Asus EeePC. Microsoft also stated that it will allow small PC shop builders to resale till the end of January.

Dell goes green!!!

Dell recently released its Energy Smart Vostro 410 desktop, designed exclusively for small businesses. The starts at Vostro 410Rs.32,900 and saves customers up to 47 percent in annual energy costs.

“With the Energy Smart Vostro desktop, we’re able to save our customers money and collectively cut down on emissions, while delivering the features and functionality they require - especially high-performance processing power, graphics technology, fast networking and maximum expandability"-CO2Pradeep Natarajan, General Manager was quoted saying.

The Vostro 410 comes with Intel Core 2 Quad processors, 512MB graphics cards and 800MHz system memory. A larger “tower” design to allow the desktop to grow according to business needs with space for up to four hard drives vs. two in the Vostro 400 and up to 3 TB of local storage and 4 GB of memory. It has Gigabit Ethernet for fast wired network access.In addition, Vostro customers can take advantage of Dell’s new services portfolio, ProSupport, which gives them the ability to customize and tailor services to fit their technical expertise and business needs.