Why Batteries Haven't Kept Up

TimWeigel writes "Ever wonder why we can cram ever more computer power into smaller and smaller devices, but we're still (mostly) slaves to the almighty AA? This article on CNN touches on this very important facet of our lives - why the power sources for our Palm Pilots and Gameboys haven't matched the advances in computing power. In a word: physics." I had an interesting conversation with a person who's been doing a lot of research into batteries. Batteries have grown at standard normal industrial rates - which are much slower then Moore's Law, and hence, the source of our problem.

Comments

Re:Nuclear paranoia

[Lumpy]

Agreed, there were a few on the wearables list looking into the use of the power cells out of those old pacemakers and trying to calculate how many were needed to power the typical wearable pc... turned out to be un-feasable as to the tiny size of the mini-nuke batteries..

I too am flabbergasted at the paranoia-mongers blocking real advances in power generation.. My God people. we are still using power generation technology from the beginning of the 1900's! True that there needs to be better control over advanced technology power plants but the tree-huggers are really killing any chances of a antimatter generation plant being built.. ("It could split our planet in Half if it blows!", "it might make the trees sad", and other silly comments..)

The first nuclear power plant was fired up in metro Chicago! if they thought it was dangerous I highly doubt that they would risk blowing up the 3rd largest city in the United states with it back then.