Sony recalls 500 000 notebooks, battery overheating
Sony has been forced to undertake a massive global recall of 440,000 Vaio laptops because the computers can overheat and have caused a series of burning incidents around the world. The recall will involve Sony, which is battling to restore consumer confidence in its brands, offering free repairs to the laptops in 48 countries where the Vaio is sold. But the recall comes amid suggestions that the company knew about the problem for a year and lingered too long before ordering the recall. Reports in Japan suggest that the company knew about the problem when complaints began to surface in August 2007, but did not report it to the relevant Japanese ministry until last month. Sony told reporters in Tokyo that it had taken time to find the cause of the problems and establish what repairs were required.
Although the financial impact of the recall is expected by the company to be “greater than zero, but not a major impact”, it deals a heavy reputational blow to the iconic Japanese technology firm. The company has been struggling to recover its old dominance of consumer electronics but remains under constant attack from the likes of Samsung and Apple. Sony is still licking its wounds from a giant recall of 10 million lithium ion batteries two years ago – an incident that cost the company $430 million and temporarily derailed the efforts of Sony’s president, Sir Howard Stringer, to restore the company’s group-wide profit margins to five per cent.
Source: Times
that sucks
vaio = fail
and this the the justifiable reason for Vaio laptops to be 300-400 bucks more expensive than others with the same specs? what a joke…
sony company is going down hill… about the samsung thing… my dad was a big sony fan till he switched to samsung just earlier this year for his electronics need.
still i wouldn’t discredit sony altogether. they’ve produced great stuffs in the past and this could just be a phase…
hope nothing happens to my 1-year-old Vaio. right now it works like a bee and I really love it.
first Apple, then Sony… these stuff are made in China, right?
they should check their Chinese factories.
epic fail!
Yeah, i bought LG LCD TV, and had massive light bleed and weird uniformity on “black” background, well it was blueish.
It took one month for LG to say that I can replace my TV, so I gave 100euros more to the store and got me self a Bravia 32″ with digital tuner, and lot’s more that LG couldn’t gave me.
“Black” background…….still black.
Not buying Sony products because of few Vaio’s that have problem with battery????
Come on! This is bull*hit….every company has it’s own problems. What do you think Sony is perfect…….Yes they are!
But global electronics, and electronic industry ain’t!
Especially in China.
So what! I had problems with my Samsung LCD monitor, I had problems with my mobo, I had problems with my PSU…………It is normal.
It’s not the batteries overheating this time. Its the occurring around the DC jack and around the screen, causing the plastic to melt.
Dear Valued Sony VAIO Customer,
Sony takes pride in the quality of its products. Recently, we became aware of a potential issue affecting the following notebook PC models:
VGN-TZ100 series
VGN-TZ200 series
VGN-TZ300 series
VGN-TZ2000 series
…. Does that mean that sony have sold over 500,000 in the TZ series then?
My VAIO battery suddenly stop working three weeks ago!!! fuc***g piece of Sh*t!!!! now my laptop is a desktop!!!! and i found out last week that this crap computer ONLY!!!! but ONLY!!!! support Windows XP Media Center or Windows Vista Home!!!!! No Professional versions supported!!!! I try to install XP Pro and the installation doesn’t recognize any of the two internal HDs. And after installing Vista Business i can’t use any of the drivers for video that ONLY sony provides!!!!! again fuc***g piece of Sh*t!!!! I will leave this computer as my DVD/Movie player since the only good thing is that have full High Definition 1080p, 300GB and HDMI-out connectors…
Do you know what the difference between Sony and most of the other companies is???
It’s simple. Usually you don’t have any problems. But when you do, they STEP UP AND FIX IT! (Free&Fast)
That’s why I always try to buy SONY. They don’t come up with excuses… You pay for it… but you know what you’re getting…
who cares? vaio sucks anyway.
@12
You probably also think life sucks… so, who cares about what you think???
Well, Apple’s using Sony’s batteries, so it’s no surprise that they had problems before, or that now Sony’s own laptops are failing as well.
i have vaio now and it is the worst laptop ever.The battery stopped working and now it’s a desktop,and what angers me more is that i contacted sony and told them the problem and asked if i cud get a replacement laptop and they said no that the wud “TRY” to fix it wtf is up with that.And the wort part is that the laptop overheats now and the charger does not work properly either.whenever i put in the battery and the charger is in the laptop shuts down and doesn’t turn on for days sometimes weeks lol.I dont recommend getting a sony laptop u can get anything else from sony except computers lol
so which is it? 500 000 or 440 000?
I own one of the TZ Series which,lucky for me, is not one of those with a problem. Have to say that they are pretty amazing laptops (been using the 11.1″ models for a few years now) and find them to be really portable when you compare the larger screen sizes.