That particular battery model was already included in a global recall of more than nine million Sony-made batteries by computer makers Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Toshiba, and others -- a recall that is costing Sony upwards of $430 million, according to the company's own estimate.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which tracks product recalls on behalf of the public, there have been 16 reports of notebook computer batteries causing "minor property damage" or "minor burns" when they overheated.

All Fuss, No Fury?

According to Carmi Levy, senior analyst with the Info-Tech Research Group, the recalls will hurt Sony and its partners in the near future, but not in the long run. "Every vendor that's involved has taken and continues to take a hit to its reputation, in terms of its ability to deliver safe product to the market," said Levy.

But, he added, time heals all wounds -- at least for big-name computer vendors. "Five years from now, Dell will still be a major player in the hardware space. Sony will still be a major supplier of components to Dell, to Fujitsu, to others," said Levy. "Nobody is going to stay awake at night worrying about that big battery recall from 2006."

Info-Tech rang the bell over faulty batteries as early as this spring in a press release that called attention to a growing number of recalls and design issues. "We were called alarmists, fearmongers," said Levy. "The term 'chicken little' was bandied about on at least one occasion."

But in August, Dell announced a major recall, noting that certain Sony batteries could, in rare conditions, overheat, spark, and catch fire. Sony has since claimed that a combination of design and production flaws account for the problem.

Power to the People?

"Consumers and enterprise buyers of technology tend to have shorter attention spans than we give them credit for," said Levy. "So in the long term, this will simply be another footnote to history."

But even footnotes have lessons to learn. Not least of these is the way that information -- and safety information, above all -- spreads quickly in an age of Internet-empowered consumers.

According to Levy, what used to pass for urban legend of mere rumor can spark a flame in the Web's underbrush of blogs, wikis, and podcasts. And that can catch a company off guard.

"Before the organization even realizes it has a problem, a major firestorm could have erupted," he said. In response, vendors should act to contain the problem before it grows.

"The lessons learned from the Great Battery Recall of 2006," said Levy, "are that even small sparks can become very large flames, and very quickly."