In a nutshell, it sucks to be Sony right now.

It began a while back when laptop batteries began to spontaneously catch fire or even explode. In August, Dell issued the largest laptop battery recall ever; over 4.1 million. The fun doesn't end there. Sony, the manufacturer of the defective lithium-ion batteries also supplies most of the large PC makers with their batteries as well...

A couple weeks after Dell's announcement, Apple followed with a giant battery recall of all 1.8 million G4 Powerbook and iBook batteries sold since 2003; the biggest recall in their history. Now Sony's computer division has joined the “You might get 3rd degree burns while innocently updating your Flickr page” party by recalling their laptop batteries.

At last count, Fujitsu, IBM, Toshiba and Hitachi all joined the battery recall list.

This story seems far from over. It might be a good time to check and see if your laptop model is one of those potentially affected. Big companies don’t necessarily want you dead, but they also won’t go too far out of their way to tell you if your product is dangerous, so be smart and check your gear out for yourself (click the manufacturer links in this article to go to their respective battery recall info pages).

Unless maybe you would rather surf the SuicideGirls News Wire from the burn ward of your local hospital.