HP, the world’s largest PC vendor, has announced a worldwide recall of 70,000 notebooks because of concerns over certain battery products that can overheat and catch fire.
In co-operation with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, HP has launched a voluntary recall and replacement programme for battery packs shipped in HP notebook PC products manufactured between August 2007 and January 2008.
The recalled Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are used with various HP and Compaq notebook computers. In total 21 laptops have been affected, including HP Pavilions, Compaq Presarios, HP laptop models and HP Compaqs.
The vendor believes certain batteries "may pose a potential safety hazard to customers. The batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard".
HP is encouraging those who have been affected to remove the battery from their notebook and contact HP. The vendor has said that customers with a battery pack affected by the programme will be eligible to receive a replacement for each verified and recalled battery, at no cost.
However Matt Fisher, director at software vendor FrontRange Solutions, said the global recall of 70,000 HP notebook batteries will cause a serious headache to IT administrators as they try to locate the affected laptops in their organisations.
He said: “A manual inventory to find the suspect batteries could take days, if not weeks, potentially leading to damaged laptops or even personal injury if the possible fire hazard is realised.”
Fisher advised using asset discovery software to produce an inventory: “Businesses can identify how many of the affected machines exist on the network, who owns them and, if possible, where the machines are located within the organisation.
“This will save considerable man hours in locating the batteries and also enable companies to return the affected batteries to get replacements as soon as possible, ensuring minimal downtime for the affected employees.”
For more information on affected models and battery verification, see HP's Battery Replacement Programme site.
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