Photo: Sony

In what must go down as the umpteenth engineering mistake by a major corporation in the last 12 months, Sony has recalled over 530,000 Vaios due to a defect that may cause them to overheat.

This could burn

Not only can Sony ill afford another misstep that will burn an even deeper hole in their already depleted pocket, the Vaios concerned may overheat so badly that they burn their users. Sony announced the laptops concerned are the Sony Vaio F series and Sony Vaio C series of laptops (released in January 2010), which have what they believe to be a defective heat monitoring chip. This defection would then cause the laptops to not only overheat, but to actually physically warp! Yep, this is not good.

Like it too much to give it back?

This was brought to Sony’s attention after around 40 user complaints, sparking a recall by simply returning the computer to the retailer purchased from. If that solution is too extreme for you, or if you’re too fond of your Sony Vaio F and Sony Vaio C series of laptops, you’ll be glad to know a software update will be released to fix this problem.

Dell should learn

Photo: Sony

In Sony’s defense, recalling the laptops is far more admirable than hoping the problem goes away, as Dell did between 2003 and 2005. Unfortunately for Dell, it seems they may recently have been found out.

Sony’s growing pains

Sony has had a rough few years, with this Sony Vaio F series and Sony Vaio C series mishap disrupting the company’s financial recovery. Prior to this year and the latter parts of 2009, the bulk of Sony’s woes were attributable to its Playstation 3 console, which wasn’t performing as well as the company thought it would, thanks in no small part to the recession. Hopefully this problem doesn’t affect the bottom line (or, more importantly, innovation) at the company.