Lenovo Pledges Public Safety First Priority After ThinkPad Fire
Lenovo spokesman Ray Gorman confirmed the incident and said Lenovo engineers are working around the clock at laboratories in Japan and Raleigh, N.C., to determine the cause of the fire. He said Lenovo is in communication with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and expects to have more information related to the incident later this week.
"Our engineers are madly racing through this," Gorman said. "We are going very, very quickly and will take whatever measures best serve our customers and public safety." Lenovo has had no other reports of similar laptop incidents, he said.
Gorman confirmed the ThinkPad T43 used the same Sony battery cells that were at the center of a recall of nearly 6 million Dell and Apple laptops earlier this year. However, he stressed that Lenovo has a different battery pack design than Apple and Dell.
Lenovo's design is aimed at shutting down the system before it gets to the point of extreme overheating, according to Gorman. Sony is one of three battery cell suppliers for Lenovo, he said.
The report of the burning ThinkPad in the Los Angeles airport comes as airlines Virgin Atlantic, Korean Air and Qantas placed restrictions on passengers that have Apple or Dell notebooks. Virgin requires passengers to remove the battery packs from those laptops.
Gorman said Lenovo was in touch with the CPSC at the time of the Dell and Apple recalls, but there had not been any incidents of this nature involving Lenovo products. Lenovo also hasn't seen any unusual patterns of problems with its notebooks over the last year, he added.
A team of several top IBM engineers was dispatched to LAX and arrived there within 12 hours of the incident, according to Gorman. The laptop in question is being inspected at Lenovo's Yamato, Japan, laboratoryto determine the cause of the fire.
One problem for Lenovo engineers investigating the incident is that the laptop in question comes with six battery cells, but four were damaged, Gorman said. The T43 laptop was one of IBM's top-of-the-line models and has since been replaced by the T60 line, which began shipping in January. Gorman didn't have figures on how many T40 models have been shipped.
As soon as Lenovo engineers know more, the company will be in touch with its channel partners regarding the incident, Gorman noted.
Jay Tipton, vice president of Technology Specialists, a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Lenovo solution provider, said he's awaiting word from Lenovo about the cause of the fire but added that he plans to continue to sell Lenovo ThinkPads.
"Being an engineer, I want to know why the ThinkPad caught on fire," Tipton said. "We already know Sony has an issue with batteries. At this point in time, we are speculating. It could be user error. There are too many variables to know for sure. I have been using my ThinkPad for three years without any issues."
Technology Specialists also sells Hewlett-Packard notebooks but doesn't plan to alter its sales strategy at this point, according to Tipton. "This is not going to change how we go to market," he said.
"My next step is to see what comes out of Lenovo and find out what steps are being taken so I can give my clients a heads up," Tipton added.