Sony Recall over half a million Vaio laptops

Sony are under the spotlight due to reports in that 535,000 Vaio laptops are going to be recalled due to a temperature control defect that may cause dangerous levels of heat, leading to chassis distortion.

The issues however don't end there, because reports by the Wall Street Journal suggest that this overheating is actually bad enough to cause skin burns although no such cases have yet been reported, according to Sony.

The F and C Series Vaio laptops are affected – machines sold since January 2010 and this translates to 259,000 laptops sold in the states, 103,000 in Europe, 120,000 in Asia and 52,000 in Japan.

Sony announced that the issues so far have been limited to customers outside Japan and there have only been 39 to this point. Customers with laptops subject to this recall can apparently solve their issue by downloading a program from Sony's Vaio update system, or their website. Additionally they can have Sony do the work for them via a collection service. We would assume that the downloadable program is a bios update for increased fan speeds or voltage adjustments.

While this sounds like it could be a serious issue, a Sony spokesperson said that the company do not expect this issue to have a major impact on earnings.

KitGuru says: Sony are at least admitting the issues and taking steps to resolve them.

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