recall

Why you should pay attention to product recalls

Here's a good rule of thumb: when a product is recalled for, say, bursting into flames, take the time to get the replacement.

A Toshiba laptop containing a recalled Sony battery caught fire and burned a desk in Great Britain last month, Toshiba said today. The laptop maker asked Sony to investigate the incident, and a short circuit in the battery pack was deemed the culprit. Toshiba says it will reach out to customers to ensure they are aware of the potential danger of continuing use of recalled batteries. A list of 28 models of affected laptop will be … Read more

Lenovo recalls 100,000 ThinkPad batteries

Here we go again. Last year, Lenovo recalled more than half a million batteries as a participant in the widespread Sony laptop battery recall that included Apple, Dell, Toshiba, and others. Lenovo today announced it is recalling 100,000 Sanyo batteries that it sells with its ThinkPad laptops.

The company has received four complaints about lithium ion batteries overheating and damaging ThinkPad laptops when the batteries were dropped or otherwise struck on the corner. The batteries in question are the extended, nine-cell battery, which Lenovo sells as an upgrade option on three ThinkPad lines: the R Series (R60 and R60e), … Read more

A gadget to improve your memory

Ever heard of Gary Small? He's the neuroscientist who wrote the The Memory Bible, the best-seller that claims to improve your memory with five mental exercises. But what if you forget what to do?

Dr. Small has an answer for that too with his "Handheld Brain And Memory Fitness Trainer," which includes the brain games necessary to execute his program. On its LCD, the memory-challenged can play games that "simultaneously exercise the left-brain (verbal memory and logical skills) and the right-brain (visual memory)." It also monitors progress automatically along the way--a good thing, because that … Read more

New laptop accessory: The nonexploding battery!

There's plenty of blame to be passed around for 2006's spate of exploding laptop-battery incidents and the accompanying mass battery recalls. After all, anytime major PC vendors have to recall more than 10 million batteries, it might be time to rethink your portable power strategy.

Rather than play the old blame game, Matsushita--parent company of the Panasonic brand, among others--has decided to get out in front of the problem and start mass-producing a newer, safer form of lithium-ion battery. The company has been putting out a few batteries with a new heat-resistance layer since April, but is now … Read more

A mutant flat-screen monitor

Remember those grotesque photos of that poor mouse with the human ear growing out of its back? We had successfully managed to suppress those memories for a decade until seeing, of all things, a new LCD.

The dual-screen monitor from Korean company Woojin, proudly dubbed the "Tenbuno," looks like the digital equivalent of a genetic mistake. It has a 19-inch LCD monitor (mouse) with an 8.4-inch screen grafted to its top edge (ear). It's supposed to facilitate multitasking, but we think it would probably just contribute to ADHD.

Technological convergence can be a good thing in … Read more