Dell reposes faith in lithium ion batteries R Raghavendra
[ 21 Aug, 2006 0148hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ] BANGALORE: Dell has reiterated its faith in lithium ion batteries as well as in Sony. While Dell continues to research on newer ways to power our laptops, the company's chief technology officer has expressed satisfaction at the ongoing efforts and the entire logistics of battery replacement. "We would better have our entire logistics in place before making an announcement of this magnitude. We are receiving a tremendous response from our customers on this issue and are sure of having everything in place soon,"Kevin Kettler, CTO of Dell told The Times of India. The world's largest manufacturer of computers decided earlier this week to recall 4.1 million laptop batteries shipped between April 2004 and July 18, 2006. According to the estimates, during this period (April 2004- July 18, 2006), the company shipped 24.9 million batteries. The batteries being recalled are with the words 'DELL' and 'Made in Japan' or 'Made in China' or 'Battery cell made in Japan, assembled in China' printed on the back of the batteries. A number of blogs are writing on the issue of battery replacement and the recent incident in Japan where a Dell laptop went up in flames. Some bloggers are also questioning the more contentious issue of lithium ion as a source of power. However, Dell has been quick to address this argument with its own blog. "Beyond what you've seen in the blogosphere, there is no update on the now infamous 'flaming notebook' from Osaka. We replaced the customer's computer and are still investigating the cause,"says Dell weblog "We think it was a fault in a lithium ion battery cell. Dell's engineering teams are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and a third-party failure analysis lab to determine the root cause of this failure and to ensure we take all appropriate measures to help prevent a recurrence." "By the way, lithium ion batteries are used in billions of notebooks, MP3 players, PDAs and cell phones these days,"he added. Kettler adds: "Our current research on this front are mostly around advances in the lithium ion. We are also working on fuel cells or renewable energy sources." According to him, Dell's ongoing research includes ways of looking at reducing overall power requirement itself. "At a platform level, we are using software to activate certain platforms from the state of deep sleep as and when required,"Kettler said. "We are also looking at the silicon technology and the processing technologies so as to be able to reduce the overall power consumption itself,"Kettler added. To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
