Sony Recalls 69,000 Vaio AC Power Adapters

Sony will recall 69,000 Vaio AC power adapters due to their increased risk of electrical shock, after a handful of reports of short-circuiting units.

"Sony has initiated a voluntary recall for certain AC power adapters which may short circuit and pose a potential electrical shock hazard," read an Oct. 27 posting on Sony’s eSupport Website.

The recall applies to AC power adapters model VGP-AC19V17 that came with notebook docking stations sold after September 2005 (specifically, the VGP-PRBX1 and VGP-PRFE1 models) and all-in-one computers sold after September 2007 (the VGC-LT, VGC-JS240, VGC-JS250, VGC-JS270, and VGC-JS290 series). In order to see if their power adapter qualifies for the recall, owners can check the serial number at this Sony site.

Sony recommends that users with the affected adapters unplug them immediately.

The announcement comes soon after Sony announced three new Vaio PCs running Microsoft’s just-released Windows 7 operating system.

Those new devices include the Sony Vaio L Touch HD PC/TV, a 24-inch multitouch widescreen with a Blu-ray disc drive and terabyte of storage. The L Touch comes with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional editions, powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad processor and dedicated Nvidia GeForce series graphics card.

On the laptop side of things, Sony also introduced the Vaio X Series, an ultra-portable notebook that measures 11 inches by 7 inches, and includes built-in Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband and a 2GHz Intel processor.

The Vaio line also made news in September with the announcement that its laptops would come bundled with Google’s Chrome browser, which may help lift the application’s share of the browser market above 3 percent.

Sony has been competing fiercely against other PC vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo and Micro-Star, for a piece of the ever-robust ultra-portable market.