Hmmm , SONY certainly gives new meaning to what is hot in computers of late quite literally !

As for crApple , what they think is cool is mostly uncool due to basic and inherent defects by deliberate intentional design .

Choices hot or uncool ?

No doubt El Reg hacks and butche^H^H^H^H^H^H editors are at this very moment heatedly debating your comment on this article as ample prose for induction into FOTW archive legend.

Nicely done, you have this Anonymous Coward's vote.

Court proven criminal: exploding battery, rootkit/virus infecting computers, illegal DRM scheme (Bluray). How on earth someone could be stupid enough to buy any sony product?

Sony is not legitimate anymore, they don't have any credibility left and their products lower the bar for quality every day....

Let me get this straight - a loose screw in the hinge can cause a short circuit? Surely that's a design flaw - even in laptops that are currently "healthy"?

Oh well, at least they're still concentrating on hardware - imagine the fun if they decided to write a WWW browser...

I'm UK based, and www.vaio-link.com has a link for the "Sony VAIO TZ Series inspection and rework programme" - and mine's affected!!

They have a voluntary "re-work" programme where they collect, jiggle with the internal wiring, and then return your laptop free of charge.

As the "recall" is voluntary, they seem not to be sending emails to inform customers of this potential trouser charring threat, so I'd suggest manually checking their web site...