3. Tick, Tick, Tick - Boom!

As the year started it was a great time for notebook batteries. We were seeing more and more batteries with longer and longer lives, some up to ten hours. However, late last year a bug was discovered in Windows XP by TG Publishing that drained batteries faster when USB devices were internally or externally connected. Microsoft provided a fix later in the year.

Perhaps we should have seen the power drain problem as a harbinger of even more scary stuff to come. By late summer we were hearing about notebook batteries that actually exploded. There was the infamous Dell laptop that was thrown out a window after it caught fire at Yahoo. It apparently exploded in the parking lot. So far there have been less than 20 reports of actual fires and/or explosions.

As it often does when the media get their hands on a story, the public became quite concerned about the possibility that their mobile computer batteries could catch fire and explode and to this fear was added the possibility that cell phone batteries could blow up in pockets and purses. Who needed terrorists? Batteries were bad enough.

A problematic Sony battery pack.

Then it began to leak out, no pun intended, that Sony was the manufacturer of most of the laptop and notebook batteries. Not only did the company have to mobilize its PR operation to deal with this impending disaster, but Sony's legal, technological, logistics and financial departments had to deal with everything from lawsuits to identifying the cause of and fixing the problem to managing the replacement of millions of batteries to the astronomical costs the company would incur before the whole mess was over.

On the personal side, I own two Sony mobile computers and I've finally received an offer to get replacement batteries for my two units. I've yet to go online to find out what I have to do, but, thanks Sony for giving me yet another thing to worry about. To the company's credit, they've taken on responsibility for the bulk of the problem and are working with due speed to save us all from fires and explosions.

Related Articles:
How Notebook Batteries Work and Why They Explode
Save Battery Life, Install Windows XP Patch
Microsoft's Power Drain Bug Patch: Does It Work?
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Microsoft To Release Patch For Power Drain Bug
Microsoft Driver Bug Saps Core Duo Power
Will Core Duo Notebooks Trade Battery Life For Quicker Response?