Lenovo Investigating Sony Battery Fire

Although it was not among the companies to issue a battery recall, Lenovo acknowledged over the weekend that it was investigating an incident in which an IBM ThinkPad T43 laptop overheated and caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport. Nobody was hurt, but officials have begun expressing concern about the safety of laptops on airplanes.

Lenovo says the battery in question was manufactured by Sony, and was the same type recalled by Dell and Apple. However, the company stopped short of detailing the specific problem and did not say whether it would announce a recall. In other cases, a manufacturing problem in Sony's plant led to microscopic shards of metal getting into the battery and causing a short circuit.