Laptop batteries have long been a source of consternation for their owners and for the companies that manufacture them. Increasing power demands of modern laptops, with bigger and brighter screens, faster processors, and faster hard drives, have all put strains on the ability of the batteries to keep up.

Packing all that power into such a small space sometimes leads to disaster, as happened to an unfortunate Dell laptop in June at a conference at Osaka, Japan. Now, Dell has announced they are issuing a general recall for over four million laptop batteries. The recall affects notebook computers purchased between April 2004 and July 2006. Potentially affected models include:

Latitude: D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810
Inspiron: 500M, 510M, 600M, 700M, 710M, 6000, 6400, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9400, E1505, E1705
Precision: M20, M60, M70, M90
XPS: XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170, XPS M1710

Read more: Ars Technica