All sorts of opinions are flying around about Dell's recall of over four million laptop computer batteries announced yesterday. A quick scan of blog posts in Technorati show some people saying it's the largest product recall in consumer electronics history. Others say Dell has issued a recall for the computers themselves (no, it's just the batteries). Many posts I see make reference to the recent cases where Dell laptops have burst into flames, events that clearly triggered the recall announcement. It's worth mentioning that the batteries are manufactured by Sony not by Dell. But will anyone make any differentiation in relation to that? It's doubtful. As far as most people will care, it's a Dell computer battery. So on the face of it, it's Dell's issue not Sony's, although Bloomberg reports that Sony may share the costs of Dell's recall. If I had a Dell laptop, I'd think twice about leaving it running unattended whether or not that laptop is on the list of models affected by the battery recall.