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Sony warns half a million VAIO laptops could overheat

By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 30 Jun 2010 at 12:03

Sony has warned that 535,000 VAIO laptops could overheat after the discovery of a temperature gauge error.

Sony said it had received 39 complaints about overheating in the VAIO F and C series laptops, leading to distortion of the machine's shape.

"In rare cases, these notebook computers can overheat due to a potential malfunction of the internal temperature management system," Sony said.

Of the half a million affected laptops, 103,000 were sold in Europe, with the rest in the US, Japan and China. A Sony spokeswoman said "there have been no reports to date of any issues with these models in the UK."

In Europe, the affected models are in the VAIO VPCF11 and VPCCW2 series, which have been sold since January of this year. The problem can be mitigated with a BIOS firmware update, available here, where customers can also check if their laptop is one of the affected models.

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User comments

Oh, thanks...

Bought a VPCF11C4E a couple of weeks ago.

Lovely bit of kit, although I thought that it ran warm, compared to my Toshiba Tecra - although that runs a C2D, not an i7, and is twice as high...

By big_D on 30 Jun 2010

Sony: style over function.

By mspritch on 1 Jul 2010

@mspritch

Having used a lot of different makes and models over the years - I currently have 2 Toshibas, a Samsung, an Acer and an HP on my desk and I've probably prepped and sent out about a dozen laptops in the last 12 months, plus personal laptops, the Sony F series is one of the better laptops to work with. I prefer it to the other laptops on my desk - better keyboard, better display, the only downside is a lack of USB ports (only 2), other than that, it is a very nice piece of kit and it was very good value for money - much better than the MacBook Pro I was looking at getting; it cost less than half what the same specced MBP would have cost.

By big_D on 1 Jul 2010