Of the 16,000 batteries, 3,768 batteries were sold in the Asia-Pacific region -- the specific number of Australian users affected is unknown. According to Hewlett-Packard: "the estimated impacted battery shipments to Asia Pacific make up 0.23 percent of the total HP notebook shipment for the region (including Japan) in 2005."
The batteries in question -- assembled between January 1, 2005 and January 10, 2005 -- include a defect which Hewlett-Packard says poses "a potential safety hazard to customers."
To date, 20 incidents have been reported worldwide, including one minor injury and 11 cases of minor property damage, according to the US consumer product report.
As a result, HP will replace all battery packs that have a barcode label starting with L3, free of charge. In the Asia-Pacific region, said battery packs are used with the following notebooks:
- HP Pavilion dv1000 Family
- Compaq Presario V2000 Family
- Compaq M2000 Family
- HP Pavilion ze2000 Family
- HP Compaq nx4800 Family
Back in 2001, Compaq recalled 1.4 million power adaptors for its notebook computers. That case involved notebooks manufactured between 1988 and 2001 and resulted in five reports of the computers catching on fire.
CNET News.com's Dawn Kawamoto contributed to this report.
