Sony Vaio acts over warped laptops

Vendor leaps into action after 535,000 Vaios potentially affected by overheating

Sony stressed it has never used the word 'recall' in conjunction with the affected machines

Sony has moved to clarify reports that it is recalling more than half a million Vaio laptops due to overheating concerns, stressing the issue can be resolved through a simple BIOS update.

Reports surfaced yesterday that Sony had recalled 535,000 Vaio F- and C-Series models sold since January, 103,000 of them in Europe.

A Sony representative stressed that the vendor had at no stage used the word ‘recall’ and suggested its message to the press had been lost in translation.

However, she did confirm that Sony had been forced to act following complaints from 39 customers, two of which were based in Europe.

“We had 39 issues worldwide where part of the chassis had overheated and the plastic had warped,” she said. "No one has been injured.

“This is certainly not a recall. We discovered that the issue can be fixed through a BIOS update.”

There have been no incidents of overheating in the UK, the representative stressed.
Customers who have registered their machines will be contacted directly by Sony.

She added that confusion had also been caused by the terminology employed by the US body the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which announced a “voluntary recall” of the affected products in cooperation with Sony.

“They use the terminology of voluntary recall to mean that if you want to send it back, you can,” she explained.