tech news and opinions
Designer Knut Karlsen has come up with the innovative idea of integrating flexible solar cells onto rechargeable batteries.
Karlsen’s current battery is just a prototype and isn’t exactly ideal the charging isn’t that efficient and the battery itself has to be smaller to fit all of the extra components but hopefully the design will get significantly better over time.
Prototype SunCat batteries enable solar charging | Crave – CNET.
Freeloader now has the smallest and lightest battery charger in the world. It allows you to recharge AA, AAA NiMH and NiCd rechargeable batteries through your computers USB port.
Features:
You can pick up this device over at Gizoo for about $25 US.
Gateway is recalling 14,000 notebook batteries from Gateway 400VTX and 450ROG Series notebooks sold between May 2003 and August 2003.
Gateway says that there have been 4 reported cases of overheating batteries from the notebooks in question.
The affected batteries can be identified by the following part numbers: 6500760 or 6500761.
If you own one of these notebooks you can head on over to www.gateway.com/battery/ and that will give you directions to return your affected battery.
(Dell Laptop Exploding)
After a notebook exploded in someones lap Acer decided to recall the batteries affected. That means 27,000 more batteries will be added to the defective list.
TravelMate and Aspire series notebooks with model numbers starting with 242, 320, 321, 330, 422, 467, 561, C20, 556, 560, 567, 930, 941 and 980 are affected by the recall.
If you think your notebook may be included in the recall go here to check out if it is.
and, yes they are Sony batteries.
[via DailyTech]
This scares me because I have a MacBook. I do always shut it down at night time and almost never have it in sleep mode. I don’t leave it plugged in while I’m not around but this still scares me.
The user (mattyb) on the MacTalk forums said that the notebooks battery life seemed to be less than it has been in the past. mattyb said that the notebook was in sleep mode and charging while on a bookshelf
“My girlfriend said she heard it hissing like a steam valve, then smoke started pouring out of it and a couple of seconds later, a very large flash fire started.”
check out the MacTalk forums for the whole story and more pictures.
Via [TechEBlog]
Lenovo is recalling 205,000 of its 9 cell batteries. The batteries were sold as replacement or optional batteries for ThinkPad R60, R60e, T60, T60p, Z60m, Z60m, Z61e, Z61m, and Z61p notebooks. The batteries with the part number FRU P/N 92P1131 are being recalled.
The batteries, made by Sanyo, could catch fire if hit hard in the corner like from a fall, the batteries could over heat causing the fire. Sanyo is defending the batteries saying “the problem resulted from strong external impact to the battery and was not a problem with the batteries themselves.”