Never one to be left out of a trend, Lenovo and IBM are jointly recalling more than half a million laptop batteries, over fears that in the unlikely event of a short-circuit, a laptop could catch fire. The recall was at least partially prompted by the September 16 fire we told you about last week, when an older IBM ThinkPad burst into flames at LAX.

This follows major battery recalls from Dell and Apple, as well as a smaller recall by Toshiba. In all these cases, the batteries in question were manufactured by Sony.

Here's a list of affected systems, taken from the Lenovo press release. Full details on how to replace a bad battery are available at the company's Web site.

IBM and Lenovo sold these Sony batteries in systems listed below between February 2005 and September 2006. Customers who bought one of the following systems may have a battery subject to this recall:

ThinkPad R Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e)

ThinkPad T Series (T43, T43p, T60)

ThinkPad X Series (X60, X60s)

• Read also: laptops
• Email to a friend | Print this post