Price fixing is a dirty business, one that benefits the big boys and picks the pockets of the consumer. If you’ve bought a Motorola mobile, a Dell PC or an iPod in the last few years, you may have spent over the odds as a victim of a manufacturing cartel.

Three companies - LG, Sharp and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd - have admitted to fixing the prices of liquid crystal display TV screens, computer monitors and other LCD screens. In particular, Sharp was charged for fixing prices on LCD panels sold to Dell for computers, Motorola for its Razr phone and Apple for its iPods.

Collectively, the three firms have been fined nearly $600 million by the US Department of Justice; LG was fined $400 million - the second highest criminal fine the department has ever imposed.

[Broadcasting & Cable]

Now there’s a new way to get flamed online. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled 100,000 laptops fitted with Sony batteries after 19 reports of overheating, including 17 cases of fire. Two people also suffered minor burns as a result, which makes you wonder how important that email reply must have been. Flesh. Burning. Pain. Unbearable. Must. Keep. Typing.

Although they were manufactured by Sony, the lithium-ion batteries were supplied with machines built by Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Dell. 35,000 batteries were used in models sold in the US market, 2,000 batteries were shipped to the Japanese market and the remaining 63,000 went to European and Asian markets.

At the moment, no recall notices for those batteries and machines shipped to the UK and Europe have been issued, but they are expected imminently.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has only released model details of the batteries being recalled in the US, which may or may not be similar to those that will be recalled in the UK; you can find full details here.