Will Batteries destroy Dell and Apple’s reputation?

By: Sahar Tadayyon

Do you have any Dell or Apple Laptop? So, be careful. And don’t get surprised if your laptop is detained when you are going to fly by Virgin Atlantic Airways. Virgin Atlantic Airways is the third airline which has put limitation of using Dell and Apple notebooks running with their batteries. They have arranged some leads and power supplies to remove some annoyances from their costumers.

The story has started when Dell recalled over 4 million notebook computer batteries after some consumer’s complained about overheating in their laptops and sometimes producing smoke from it. After that, Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries which were used in PowerBook and iBook laptops. These batteries were manufactured by Sony.

So, for prevention of any explosion in the plane, passengers have to wrap the batteries and place in their carry-on luggage.

In response of this recalling, first Qantas, the Australian airline banned passengers to carry on board their Dell laptop unless they remove the batteries and use with external power supplies and after that Korean Air used the same policy.

The interesting part is that Dell and Apple have just recalled batteries of some notebook’s models not all of them but these air lines have banned all sorts of Dell and Apple’s notebooks.

According to CNET:

“The recall affects certain Inspiron, Latitude and Precision mobile workstations and XPS units shipped between April 2004 and July 18, 2006. Sony manufactured the batteries that are being recalled, the representative said.”

Of course, this recalling has brought significant expenditure for Dell:

“At the moment, this looks like the largest battery recall in the history of the electronics industry, said Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates.”The scale of it is phenomenal."
Sony will help pay the costs associated with the recall of 4.1 million batteries the company supplied to Dell, said Rick Clancy, a Sony spokesman.”

Imagine, in a sunny day, you are sitting comfortably in your room or office and using your laptop, suddenly your laptop starts smoking or suddenly it is exploding. What kind of shock it is! Since this incident happened and reported to Dell company, the nervous owners tried very fast to get back their products. It is natural every explosion or smoking destroys reputation of these two companies fast which they have tried to get for many years.