Dell Knew of Battery Malfunctions a Year Ago

Ruh-roh, Shaggy. Dell's under even more scrutiny now thanks to documents unearthed by trade newspaper CRN that show that Dell first identified its overheating battery problem in late 2005.

CRN is reporting that Dell first reported overheating problems to the Consumer Product Safety Commission last October, which was followed by a tiny recall of only 22 thousand batteries that were thought to be manufacturing anomalies. But batteries and laptops kept melting, and it wasn't until the 4 million unit recall in August that the full effect was known. Or so they say.

As the Consumer Product Safety Commission points out, it's not uncommon for a vendor to start with a small recall and expand it as more information becomes known and more cases of failure are confirmed. But jumping from a few thousand to 4 million in one fell swoop? A cynic might imagine that there might have been a medium-sized recall somewhere in the middle there.

Still, no one is accusing Dell directly of mishandling its recall response. (It helps that, to date, no one has been hurt by an exploding battery.) Meanwhile, Sony is preparing to recall batteries on an even larger scale than has already been announced. Will the problems be corrected before a real catastrophe occurs? Let's hope for the best.