Stephen Pollard did a short piece about being on the train with his laptop and not being able to post and edit sufficiently well in that situation. I recall at the time trying to imagine Stephen on a train with a laptop and began worrying awfully about his health. After all – his procreative abilities were in great danger. Does he by any chance use Sony batteries?

PC maker Dell overnight issued a recall of 4.1 million notebook computer batteries made by Sony in response to concerns about overheating and fire risk.

"Under rare conditions, it is possible for these batteries to overheat, which could cause a risk of fire," Dell said today in a statement.

In recent weeks there have been a number of reports of Dell notebooks catching fire, the most well-known case happening in Osaka, Japan two months ago when a laptop computer was photographed as it burst into flames.

Lithium ion batteries used in laptops are believed to be behind a number of reported incidents in which the devices have caught fire. Although Dell's batteries are sold under its own brand name, they are manufactured by Sony.

In December last year, Dell announced a recall of 35,000 batteries sold with Latitude, Inspiron and Precision laptops. Since then, further incidents have been reported on blogs and forums, and the issue has generated an increasing amount of attention with images of burnt-out laptops appearing on a regular basis.

The latest recall affects batteries in certain Inspiron, Latitude, Precision and XPS models and were sold either with the units, or as a service replacement, between April 1, 2004 and July 18, 2006.

The identification number for each battery appeared on a white sticker, and customers could contact Dell on 1300 734 947 to check if their battery was part of the recall. Alternatively, details of the recall have been posted on its site at http://www.dellbatteryprogram.com.

Recalled batteries were sold with the following units:

Dell Latitude: D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810

Inspiron: 6000, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 500m, 510m, 600m, 6400, E1505, 700m, 710m, 9400, E1705

Dell Precision: M20, M60, M70 and M90 mobile workstations

XPS: XPS Gen2, XPS M170 and XPS M1710.

Stephen, hello … hello … hello …