Dell and the Exploding Laptop - Part Deux

I said in my last post I wasn't going to poke fun at Dell over the battery issue. And indeed I wasn't. I think most people don't understand just how hard it is to get all this technology reliable on 100% (not 99.99%) of equipment. With just 99.99%, 4m computers would mean 400 very unhappy users and an active fire brigade. That's a lot of bad anecdotes and YouTube videos. Dell's problems could happen to anyone - Apple, HP, Lenovo etc. and indeed, they already have over the years.

However, I picked up this story yesterday which shows that Dell and Sony discussed this problem 10 months ago. Not only that, this story demonstrates that Dell thought it serious at THAT time.

That, I'm afraid is arrogance and foolishness as it indicates a failure on both companies parts to hide from a serious malfunction. It is also irresponsible. And I think it should make those customers who are being told they will have to wait over 75 days for a replacement battery pretty mad too.

Tags: Dell, Sony, Battery