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Airline “Restricts” Use of Apple’s, Dell’s Notebooks Onboard.

Category: Mobile

by Anton Shilov

[ 08/27/2006 | 11:49 PM ]

After reports claiming that notebooks from Apple Computer and Dell could explode broke out, a leading air company Qantas said that it forbid usage of certain Dell laptops and also considered restricting of Apple’s notebooks usage.

“We have put limitations on Dell computers and at this stage we are awaiting further information from Apple,” a spokesman for Qantas told APC.

Earlier Qantas informed its passengers that laptops from Dell could be used onboard either on battery power, or with battery removed and the mobile computer plugged into power outlet.

Apple Computer has recalled batteries for 1.8 million of laptops, whereas Dell has recalled 4.1 million batteries with potentially dangerous cells. Those cells were supplied to the company by Sony and are also used in laptops by HP and Lenovo. Nevertheless, there were no reports about exploding HP and Lenovo batteries.

Sony said in an official statement that the recall arises because, on rare occasions, microscopic metal particles in the recalled battery cells may come into contact with other parts of the battery cell, leading to a short circuit within the cell. Typically, a battery pack will simply power off when a cell short circuit occurs. However, under certain rare conditions, an internal short circuit may lead to cell overheating and potentially flames, the company indicated. The potential for this to occur can be affected by variations in the system configurations found in different notebook computers.

If other airlines “restrict” usage of potentially dangerous laptops onboard, enterprises, which employees use the time during the flights to work on their laptops may start to acquire laptops from other makers, meaning sales drop for companies like Dell, HP and Lenovo.