Dell plans to recall 4.1 million laptop batteries after a series of public reports of systems catching fire. 

The batteries were originally manufactured by Sony and were used in laptops sold between 1 April 2004 and 18 July 2006.

Users of Dell Latitude, Inspiron and Precision notebooks are urged to visit a special Dell Battery Recall website scheduled to go live on 15 August. They can still use the notebook systems with an AC adapter but with the battery removed. 

"There were very few incidents to go on here, and it would have been easy to justify them as anomalies," Alex Gruzen, senior vice president of Dell's mobility product group, wrote on the company blog. 

"But we are not willing to do that because, in everything that we do, it is absolutely about safety first."

The issue of Dell laptops catching fire got some major exposure after photos were published of an exploding unit in Osaka followed by additional pictures of charred systems.

Gruzen insisted that the recall was not related to the reports. "We are looking at safety data every single day, and this did not start when we heard about the incident in Osaka," he said.

The recall is the largest such programme in Dell's history.