If the recent spate of Dell laptop explosions has made you wary of picking up a new Inspiron notebook for fear your collection of wicker sculptures will be consumed by fire, you can rest a little easier. A team of crack forensic engineers at the mammoth PC maker has identified exactly which laptop batteries are at risk, a crop made by Sony, and Dell says its stopped putting those batteries in new models as of July 18. Unfortunately, it started using them in April 2004. That translates into 4.1 million laptop batteries that are out in the wild, each with the potential to catch fire under "rare conditions," according to Dell's website. This of course means the company has gone ahead and issued a recall of all those batteries — the largest recall in the company's history. Apparently, it affects approximately 18% of all the laptops sold between April '04 and July '06. You can find out if your model is a potential ticking time bomb, and thus in need of a free replacement battery, here.
— Peter Pachal

The New York Times, via Gizmodo