Toshiba recalls 340,000 HP batteries for laptops

Toshiba is recalling worldwide 340,000 Hp laptop battery batteries made by HP Corp. for its laptops because of problems in recharging them, the latest in a series of embarrassing battery problems for long-respected HP.


A Toshiba notebooA Toshiba notebook. Japanese electronics giant Toshiba is to recall 340,000 laptop computers worldwide due to defective batteries made by rival HP, which is already facing woes over its batteries. [AFP]

The batteries sometimes stop recharging or run out of power, but no injuries or other accidents have been reported, Toshiba Corp. spokesman Keisuke Omori said Tuesday, while declining to give the number for reported problems.

The defect is not directly related to the problem behind last month's recall of laptop battery by Dell and Apple, which cited concerns that the batteries could overheat and catch fire.


Dell Inc. asked customers to return 4.1 million faulty laptop batteries, while Apple Computer Inc. recalled 1.8 million batteries worldwide.

In both those cases, the troubled lithium-ion batteries were made by HP Energy Devices Corp., a Japan-based subsidiary of HP Corp.

Tuesday's recall affects 100,000 laptop batteries in the U.S., 45,000 in Japan, and the rest in other parts of the world, Omori said.

The problems are found in some of the Hp F4098A battery packs for Dynabook and Satellite laptop models manufactured by Tokyo-based Toshiba from March through May this year, and they will be replaced for free, he said.


The series of production problems at HP comes at a crucial time when the Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment company behind the Walkman portable player and PlayStation video game machines has been trying to bolster its brand image under the leadership of its first foreign executive, Welsh-born Howard Stringer.

Earlier this month, HP said it would postpone the European launch of its PlayStation 3 by four months to March over problems with producing a component in the Blu-ray disc part of the machine.

The much-awaited upgrade console is set to hit stores in November in the United States and Japan as planned, but fewer units will be available, according to Ken Kutaragi, the executive in charge of the project.


Last week, HP said it will postpone by a week until September 23 the Japanese Hp F4809A battery launch of its new digital Walkman because of a malfunction of an unspecified part of the portable music player.


HP has been fighting to make a comeback after falling behind Apple in portable music players and other rivals, including Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, in flat-panel TVs _ both hit electronics products in recent years. HP has been successful in selling slimmed down TVs lately with panels made in a joint venture with Samsung.

HP shares edged down 0.8 percent to close at 4,930 yen (US$42; euro33) in Tokyo, while Toshiba shares climbed 0.5 percent to 796 yen (US$6.70; euro5.30).

leading 64-bit thin and light era

With the advent of mobile era, the "business responding" anytime anywhere and "mobile office" have become a trendy thing, putting forward much higher requirement on the speed and mobility of laptop PC products. Nevertheless, this also indicates a new development opportunity for laptop battery PC vendors: those who act earlier will win the advantages in the future competition.


On November 15, Asus held a releasing ceremony entitled "my way, my speed"---Asus laptop PC takes the lead of 64-bit thin and light era. On the announcement ceremony, the company launched the first model of 64-bit thin and light laptop PC with 14" screen---W3Z. As the main product released by Asus this time, W3Z incorporated AMD TurionTM 64 mobile computing technology with Asus elegant design of "thin and light expert" on notebook PC, expanding its advantages into the 64-bit tech and make W3Z the very first 64-bit thin and light laptop PC in real sense on the market that offers a reliable option for users who are sensitive on speed and mobility.


Positioned as a mainstream business product, W3Z carries on with the representative Hp F4812A battery styles of Asus W3 series in design, combining the ancient Yunmen dance with Chinese bamboo culture in the designing concept: one battery in the shape of bamboo is naturally connected with the display and the main body, adding more beauty to the spindle which is going to move around in a much smooth manner. In the meantime, the buckle-free design makes the product show much stronger oneness feature in the outlook, combining the display with product's main body in a more natural way. The case of the laptop uses carbon-fiber alloy that is strong in quality but looks quite gentle.


In the configurations, W3Z incorporates AMD TurionTM 64 mobile computing technology with its memory of 512MB being able to scale up to 2GB，the optional hard-drives Hp 319411-001 battery range from 40 to 100GB while the 14" wide screen will vividly illustrate the real-life pictures and the shocking speed of 64 bit. AMD TurionTM 64 mobile computing tech features an optimization in the areas of laptop PC's thin and light body, long battery life, security, the compatibility of wireless and graphical technology. ATI RS480M is an ideal chipset in the combination with AMD TurionTM 64, whose built-in Radeon Xpress 200M graphics-processing unit has very good 3D processing capability that will meet the needs of ordinary business applications and home entertainment.


Moreover, it supports both 32 bit and 64-bit Hp laptop battery computation, saving users' additional investment to enjoy the benefits brought by the 64-bit technology. W3Z is equipped with optional built-in blue-tooth 2.0 module and wireless network module and its data transmission speed is 3 times the ordinary blue-tooth 1.2 protocol, offering full and immediate support to business users for communications anytime anywhere. With the 5-in-1 Card Reader as well as the diversified interfaces of IEEE1394, SPDIF and VGA, W3Z can be connected with almost all digital devices, helping users to merge into the digital tide. The built-in CD-ROM can be replaced with a second HDD at any moment, which is quite easy for data backup or enable the second battery to have longer mobile usage life.


Furthermore, W3Z is also equipped with multiple Asus patented proprietary technologies like AUDIO DJ, NB PC Probe 3.0 intelligent diagnosis tech, ADTDII dynamic heat dissipation tech, Power 4 Gear+ smart power-saving tech, etc., providing complete and strong support for users' mobile digital life in terms of entertainment, system stability, heat dissipation and power saving.


Asus' AUDIO DJ tech makes it possible to play music without having to turn on the machine, enabling business users to enjoy amusing digital life amid busy work. In addition, it features better power saving that is compliant with the trend of energy-saving and environmental friendly of laptop PC. The NB PC Probe 3.0 intelligent diagnosis tech is able to monitor the system's temperature online, displaying the temperature changes of major heating components like CPU, forwarding the accurate temperature status to the host through Compaq Presario 2100 battery(compaq 2100 battery) temperature sensor on the motherboard. Meanwhile, it will automatically fix the fan's operational condition with the monitor, setting up the functions of temperature alarm, system shutdown, etc. so as to prevent the host from being damaged due to over-use or mal-operation, offering users with ease-of-mind in applications.


The convergence of Asus proprietary ADTDII dynamic heat dissipation tech and Power4 Gear+ intelligent power-saving tech with AMD TurionTM 64 mobile computing tech creates the outstanding performance of W3Z in speed and thin size： the ADTDII dynamic heat dissipation tech successfully solves the heat dissipation issue of laptop PC within limited space, providing solid technical support for W3Z to fully demonstrate its high performance of 64-bit, making it a very stable and thin and light working and amusement Compaq Presario 2500 battery platform. Moreover, by incorporating the Power 4 Gear+ smart power-saving tech, W3Z's dual-battery life is extended up to seven hours that offers long-effective power support for businessmen in their 64-bit digital trip. All these unique features work to make W3Z an outstanding product out of the identical peers made by other vendors.


The marketing specialists think that the era of 64-bit is approaching rapidly with thin and light outlook and good portability being the ever-lasting trend of notebook PC. With the two most notable characteristics of 64-bit speed and light weight, Asus W3Z laptop PC not just provides users with much faster and lighter mobile life experiences, but also drives Asus notebook PC to move ahead of its peers in the era of 64-bit featuring thin and light.

For more detailed information, please visit Asus website: www.asus.com.

About Asus?


Asus PC is a leading international-level 3C solution provider in IT industry, whose products range from motherboard, notebook PC, graphic cards, server, wide-frequency communication, cable modem to optical storage devices. It has a total headcount of 58,000 worldwide in addition to a world-level engineering tech R&D team. Its annual business turnover is compaq 2500 battery over US$7.7 billion. The company's mission is to provide consumers and corporate clients with the most innovative technological solutions. Between 1998-2005, Asus is listed by America's Business Week as one of the Top 100 IT companies for eight years in succession.

Sudden fuel price hike ruled out

  First post by: www.itbattery.com

The government ruled out any immediate increase in fuel prices dell Inspiron 8600 battery on Friday despite increasing market speculation about a possible hike, top pricing officials said.


Officials at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said the recent oil price rise on the global market indicated that the domestic fuel prices should be raised.


But Xu Kunlin, deputy director of NDRC's pricing department, told a news briefing on Friday that the authorities would only dell Inspiron 6400 battery increase prices after further careful consideration.


According to the fuel pricing mechanism announced on Friday, China will adjust its fuel prices when global crude oil costs fluctuate more than 4 percent over 22 straight working days.


The global crude oil price has been increasing dell Inspiron E1505 battery since March, rising from $35 a barrel to around $58 on Thursday.


This was the first time the government made public its fuel pricing mechanism since it announced last December that it would link domestic gasoline and diesel prices to the international market.

Xu said many oil traders had engaged in speculative dealing in recent days amid rumors of a price hike. "To prevent speculative trading, we will not adjust oil prices exactly in line with the benchmarks set in the regulation."

"And of course, we will not increase the prices today (Friday) so that they can profit from speculation," Xu said.


The government raised the benchmark retail price of gasoline by 290 yuan ($42) per ton, or 5 percent, and diesel dell laptop battery by 180 yuan per ton, or 3.7 percent, on March 25.


Xu said the price revisions show the new pricing mechanism that took effect on Jan 1 means the government can respond accordingly to international oil price changes.

He said the government would take the global economic situation into account when deciding the adjustment of oil prices. "For example, if the US economy continues to worsen and oil prices come down, we will not increase prices in the short term."


To prevent speculation, Xu ruled out announcing the timing of dell GD761 battery oil price adjustment in advance. "I don't think we need transparency in this regard."


Cao Changqing, director of the NDRC pricing department, said the Chinese government has tracked the trend of several oil markets worldwide.

China only monitored the oil price in Singapore in the 1990s. "We've learnt a lesson from that because that created many massive profit-making opportunities for speculators," he said.

PetroChina said on its website that China's ex-factory gasoline and diesel prices are linked to the prices of Brent, Dubai and Cinta crude oil, and it will also take into account transportation, processing, tax and refining costs.

Small and beautiful

  First post by: www.itbattery.com

With digital products becoming ever smaller, Beijing Weekend Guide zeroes in on two of the smallest hi-tech dell KD476 battery widgets you can find in town.


Apple released its new iPod shuffle in the middle of March, but Beijing consumers saw it on sale at the Apple Sanlitun Store only last month. This is the third generation of iPod shuffle MP3 players, which is smaller than an AA size battery. Priced at 608 yuan, it comes in two colors - silver and black.


All the controls are located on the earphone cord. The iPod dell TD347 battery shuffle does not disappoint. It is the first MP3 player which can actually talk to you. The new VoiceOver function enables it spell out your song titles, artists and playlists. It is also multi-lingual and automatically selects the best language for your songs. The small shuffle can "speak" 14 languages including Polish, Greek, Italian, Japanese and French.


Though Apple has the thinnest laptop Mac Air, the credit for the smallest one goes to Sony Vaio P. You can put the 1.4-pound device into your jean pocket. Though the keyboards are so small that you may even feel a little uncomfortable while typing, its WiFi is a big dell Inspiron 1000 battery plus. It even has Windows Vista installed, and comes with a disc space of 60GB or 128GB. It is more like an all-function mobile disc. So, no worries if your boss suddenly asks you to send him an e-mail while you are out having fun in Sanlitun. All you need is Vaio P.

Smaller batteries will pack more power

  First post by: www.itbattery.com

Think of an electric car that can accelerate swiftly to cruising dell Inspiron 2200 battery speed, laptop computers that can recharge in a couple of minutes rather than hours and a generation of super-miniature mobile phones.


That's the vision sketched yesterday by a pair of scientists in the United States, unveiling an invention that they say could lead to a smaller, lighter and more power-packed lithium battery than anything available today.

Current batteries made of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) are good at storing large amounts of electricity but stumble at releasing it.


They are better at dispensing the dell 312-0292 battery power in a steady flow than at discharging it or gaining it in a sudden burst.


As a result, electric cars perform best when traveling along the motorway at a constant speed rather than when they are accelerating, and their batteries take hours to recharge when they run down.

Until now, the finger of blame has pointed at charged lithium atoms. These ions, along with electrons, move too sluggishly through the battery material before arriving at the terminal to deliver their charge - or so it was thought.


But a pair of materials experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say the problem lies not with the ions but rather at how the ions gain access to nano-scale tunnels that riddle the material dell INSPIRON 2600 battery and transport the electrons to their destination.


Their solution was a lithium phosphate coating that, like a system of feeder roads, nudges the ions towards the tunnels. The ions then zip instantly down the tunnel entrance and to the terminal.

A small cell phone battery can be recharged in just 10 seconds thanks to the improved ion flow, they report in the British journal Nature.


In theory, a large battery that would be used to power a plug-in hybrid electric car could be recharged in just five dell INSPIRON 2650 battery minutes, compared to up to six or eight hours at present. But this would only be possible if a beefed-up electricity supply were available.


Unlike other battery materials, the tweaked LiFePO4 does not degrade as much when repeatedly charged and recharged. This opens the way to smaller and lighter batteries, which will not need such heft to deliver the same power, MIT said in a press release.

The invention, which was supported by US government funds, has already been licensed by two companies, MIT said.


Because the material involved is not new - the difference is the way it is dell 1G222 battery made - "the work could make it into the marketplace within two to three years," it said.


The invention is the latest claimed advance in the quest to replace conventional electro-chemical batteries, which are heavy, lack energy density and take time to recharge.

Research in this field ranges from updated lithium-ion technology to hydrogen dell BAT3151L8 battery and combinations of a battery with so-called ultracapacitors that harness exotic materials such as barium titanate to deliver a jolt.

Wires, batteries will soon be things of past

  First post by: www.itbattery.com

No more batteries, no more chargers and no more wire spaghetti. This is the future promised by "wireless power", a means of broadcasting electricity through the air to dell Latitude X300 battery, iPods and other gadgets without the need for cables and sockets.


Untethered lighting, audio speakers and digital dell W0465 battery picture frames are expected to be among the first commercial products demonstrated in Las Vegas this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the world's biggest gadgets tradeshow.


Experts believe this is just the beginning and that eventually wireless electricity - dubbed "WiTricity" by some - could do for battery life what WiFi did for the Internet. In a world without wires, laptop users in cafes and airport terminals would be inside an "electricity hotspot" and no longer have to delve past legs, bags and furniture in search of an awkwardly located dell Inspiron 2000 battery socket.


"You'd be able to buy a desk that charged any gadget placed on it, or power any PC you put on top," said James Holland, editor of gadgets website Electricpig.co.uk.

"If each room had wireless power, you'd know that once you walked through the front door your mobile would start charging up - even while still in your bag or pocket. You'd never need to hunt for the right charger again."

Among the companies showcasing the ambitious technology at CES is PowerBeam. Its system turns electricity into an invisible laser, then literally beams it, as heat, across the room to a solar cell that converts it back into electricity.

David Graham, the co-founder of PowerBeam, said: "We're going to delete the word 'recharge' from the English dictionary. If your cell phone is recharging on your desk all day, you won't be thinking about it."


The Silicon Valley company can currently use a laser dell Latitude LS battery to generate about 1.5 watts of power to a solar cell 10 meters away. This would be enough to power an electronic speaker or small LED lights, but not enough to operate a laptop, which requires an estimated 30 to 50 watts. However, Graham said that the technology could dell 2834T battery comfortably be scaled up.


PowerBeam insists its laser does not pose a risk to users' health because it is simply moving heat from one place to another. Graham said that, if someone walked through the beam, it would shut down within a thousandth of a second, then restart once the path is clear. The technology also promises energy dell 4834T battery efficiency because it would only power products when needed.

published a story about how much better..

  First post by: www.itbattery.com

A few days ago, we published a story about how much better dell Latitude D820 battery our Eee PC 1000H performed when we swapped the system’s 5,400rpm Seagate Momentus hard drive out for a Samsung SATA II SSD drive. Not only did the system boot faster and all apps load faster, but we got 20 more minutes of battery life with the SSD.


However, when we posted our story, we heard from users that Tom’s Hardware, a site we admire a great deal, recently published an dell Latitude D830 battery article which claims that SSDs use more power than traditional hard drives. The Tom’s Hardware story got some major attention from sites like Engadget and even got a responses from SSD-makers Super Talent and Micron, who both claim that the drives used in the dell MM165 battery Tom’s test are “early generation” and therefore more power hungry than newer models.


Is Tom’s Hardware right? We don’t think so.

Some Engadget commenters found some serious flaws in Tom’s testing. A user named Basic made a point we totally agree with:


What we need is a battery-loading benchmark which is dell YD626 battery representative of REAL-WORLD USE. For example: boot up the machine with maximum charge at a controlled temperature and sit it on 5-6 auto-refreshing controlled content web pages. Reduce all the other power outlays to the minimum - Vista power saver mode, turn down the brightness, but maybe keep the wireless network connection just to keep it close to a real use-case.


Toms didn’t do that - they ran a benchmark designed to “keep the notebook busy” and surprise, surprise the SSD’s died faster under load - disproportionately to the power they consumed (perhaps NOT disproportionately to the work achieved in that time… but Tom’s doesn’t tell us how much “work” was achieved relative to the drive’s performance… they don’t even mention the power-saving dell 312-0393 battery settings.


At LAPTOP, we actually just developed a battery life test very similar to the one Basic mentions. Our Web surfing test is a simple Windows shell script that cycles through a series of 60 popular Web sites, loading each page and then pausing for 30 seconds to simulate a user reading the page. The browser cache in Firefox is disabled so that the entire page must be downloaded each time. Meanwhile, the script writes to a timelog file every 5 seconds. The test is conducted at the laptop’s default power saving settings, except that nothing — not the hard drive, the screen, or the CPU is set to go to sleep, and all battery alerts are disabled.


Where we ran our Web surfing test on an Eee PC 1000H before, we decided we’d try it on a regular notebook. So we took a Gateway T-6828 with Vista Home Premimum SP1 and ran our test with its default Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS 5,400rpm drive, a Samsung SATA II 64GB SSD, and a SanDisk SATA 5000 32GB SSD. Our dell Latitude D800 battery results are below.


As you can see, both SSDs lasted 3:23, exactly 10 minutes longer than the default hard drive. While 10 minutes out three hours is not a significant gain, it’s certainly not a loss. In other words, the SSDs we tested don’t use more battery life than traditional hard drives, at least not during Web surfing.

To be fair to Tom’s Hardware, most of the drives they tested were different than ours. They used a Crucial, an Mtron, a MemoRight, and a SanDisk SATA 5000. We also used the SanDisk SATA 5000 as one of our test drives, but that’s the only one our tests have in common.


It’s noteworthy that, in the Tom’s Hardware Mobile Mark test, the dell Inspiron 8500 battery SanDisk SATA 5000 drive got only one minute less battery life than the traditional hard drive, while others like the Crucial got as much as an hour less. As Basic noted, it looks like the higher performance drives were penalized by Mobile Mark because they managed to do more work. The SanDisk drive actually has poor transfer rates in compared to the other drives in Tom’s test so no wonder it got better battery life. Because our test is not performance intensive and involves an equal amount of work for all drives, both SSDs lasted the same amount of time.


Our conclusion is that, in real-world use, SSDs offer a small improvement in battery life. While this tiny improvement may not be enough to sell users on SSDs as power-saving devices, it is certainly enough to say that upgrading to SSD will not cost you any battery life and may provide you with more productive minutes as you wait shorter periods of time for programs to load or for your system to boot.


Update: Bar graph reformatted to start at an X axis of 0:00. Previous version of graph showed same exact numbers, but was a “zoom in” that showed from 3:07 to 3:28. After reading some user comments that this was dell 8N544 battery confusing, we decided to change the axis lines to start at 0:00.

Free Linux Software From Dell

  First post by: www.itbattery.com

DKMS - Dynamic Kernel Module Support provides a framework where dell Inspiron 640m battery kernel dependent module source can reside so that it is very easy to rebuild modules as you upgrade kernels. This will allow Linux vendors to provide driver drops without having to wait for new kernel releases while also taking out the guesswork for customers attempting to recompile modules for new kernels.

EDD - BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Services 3.0 (EDD) is mechanism to match x86 BIOS device names (e.g. int13 device 80h) to Linux device names (e.g. /dev/sda, /dev/hda). EDD implements the EDD specification under Linux.

Devlabel - Devlabel dynamically dell Y9943 battery creates symbolic links to disk / partition names. It uses the disk's and/or partition's unique identifiers to keep the symlink pointed to the correct location even if the underlying partition's name has changed.

Efibootmgr - The efibootmgr can create and destroy boot entries, change the boot order, change the next running boot option etc.

BIOSdisk - It simplifies the process of flashing system BIOS under Linux on Dell desktops and laptops.

DVD Store - The DVD Store Version 2 (DS2) is a complete online e-commerce test application, with a backend database component, a web application dell RC107 battery layer, and driver programs.

libsmbios - Libsmbios is a cross OS library intended to be used to dell laptop battery obtain common information available in BIOS using a unified API. Currently, it can programmatically access any information in the SMBIOS tables. It also has the ability to obtain Dell system-specific information. Future plans include APIs for $PIR, and mptable mapping.

Futuristic Laptop From Microsoft

  First post by: www.itbattery.com

I have heard and seen enough of Origami, the futuristic laptop from Microsoft. I went dell Latitude D620 battery through the apparently secret video of product advertisement, I have seen numerous pictures of origami and I have decided. I hate it.

Origami is yet another monstrosity from Microsoft (with due regards to Windows). It is a clumsy product to carry in your hand. The ultralight tablet computer is several things rolled into one case. It is a laptop, a tablet pc, a media player among others. However it simply isn't something I would fancy to carry with me. It doesn't look robust for me to sit upon (yes I am fat) or use as food tray.

Neither is it going to be a conversation starter. It is easy to slip dell 312-0386 battery from your hands, doesn't fit in your pocket nor can it function as an effective weapon. I am serious. I am happy with my IBM laptop 600$ laptop cum tablet PC. It fits nicely in airplane seat tray, even when the passenger in front is reclining in full. I can use the attached notepad to scribble and it copies it to the computer. I can write my todo list in plan text and have numerous other goodies. If I ever want to switch it should be for something better or nicer looking, not a flat ugly product.

Microsoft should send its visual designers to Apple for rigorous training dell PC764 battery in the art of nice design. They may decide to leave but that is a risk they will have to take. Microsoft simply doesn't know how to design nice looking functional products, dell TD175 battery does.