Dell and Sony knew about laptop battery defects back in October 2005

There were some rumblings a couple of months ago that Dell had known about its laptop battery issues for a while, but now InfoWorld reports that a Dell spokesperson has confirmed that they had been discussing the issue with Sony (the maker of the batteries) since October of last year and had decided to hold off on issuing a recall "until those flaws were clearly linked to catastrophic failures causing those batteries to catch fire." Sony did make some design changes to help alleviate the problem (like strengthening the lining of battery cells), but that doesn't do much for batteries that are already in the market. We can understand not wanting to issue a recall until it's clear that there truly is a problem (rather than just a potential problem), but let's just say that Dell and Sony are lucky that no one's been killed or seriously injured by an exploding battery.

[Thanks, Emanuel]