Back in March 2008 there was a fire in a manufacturing plant used to build Dell Li-ion batteries.

There was some concern at the time that this would affect laptop shipments but nothing happened in the immediate April/May timeframe however it seems to have caught up with Dell and orders are now being delayed due to the shortage.

Dell take pains to point out this is an industry problem and is not Dell Specific.

I do take umbrage however in yesterdays statement from the Direct2Dell Blog.

“This availability issue was also the reason we increased our prices for spare laptop (or secondary) batteries”.

I appreciate they want to slow down laptop battery sales but most existing laptop customers want and in some cases need replacement batteries and are being penalised with higher costs.

I can sort of see this from both sides but is increasing the cost the only way to control stock?

Dell are handily promoting tips for maximizing battery usage.

Link:

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/24/update-on-laptop-battery-availability.aspx

The FT this morning reports that a businessman has been awarded £22k in damages from a former school friend who created a fake profile of him on Facebook.

This is a judgement that could have some far reaching consequences in the social networking world.

Link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c12423a8-59e3-11dd-90f8-000077b07658.html