By Stan Beer - Friday, 21 April 2006

In its second battery recall in only six months, Hewlett-Packard has issued a worldwide recall for 15,700 laptop Chinese made batteries which can pose potential fire hazard because of overheating.

In October 2005, HP issued a similar recall for over 130,000 batteries used in similar model laptops. The recall issued on April 20 includes HP Pavilion (dv1xxx,ze2xxx), Compaq Presario (V2xxx, M2xxx) and HP Compaq (nx48xx) models.

Last year's recall also involved the HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario families of laptops but many more models were affected.

According to HP, the problems are limited to just the batteries and users can still use their notebooks on AC power until their replacement batteries arrive. However, the second recall in such a short space of time must throw open to question HP's quality control and supply chain procedures.

iTWire