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Fuel Cell Laptop announced by Toshiba
Steve writes "Following on from the Fuel Cells approved for airline cabins story a week or so back, it would seem there will soon be a need for that approval:
Toshiba has announced a fuelcell powered laptop for 2004,and possibly a PDA."
but Toshiba doesn't make an option on the poll today?
Wake me when I can get a fuel cell in either:
A 'Standard' battery form factor (AAA, AA, C, D)
or
A small doohickey I can plug a standard AC mains cord into.
That's great, but from what I understand, these things have to be replaced, or at least recharged. How's that gonna be done?
So is that Regular or Unleaded?
Humor folks, enjoy it! =)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Any idea what these are actually fueled with? Alcohol or something proprietary?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In a couple years we'll all be complaining about expensive fuel cell cartridges that can't be refilled without hacking around a security chip. We'll also be complaining about the spammers marketing cheapo printer ink refills AND methanol refills. But we'll sell our souls to the devil to get 10 hours of battery life, won't we?
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
Since that article appears short, here are some more interesting links on mini fuel cells powering gadgets:
Discussion from January of the concept
Apple Laptops
Air clearance for them
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
It's still only 10 hours. I betcha that the price difference for this baby will be a lot more than if you just stock up on extra batteries. I'll keep my ineffiecent Dell for now.
If a and b in c, and a can create b, and a can create a, and b can create b, and b cannot create a, then a created c.
Is this one of those ethanol-based fuel cells? Seems like this would be a bad thing for recovering alcoholics. Imagine the stares you'd get at an AA meeting trying to power-up your machine.
Business travelers could have it bad, too. Imagine this scene:
*Man gets pulled over for swerving on the highway*
Officer: Sir, have you been drinking?
Man: No officer, not at all.
Officer: Why is there an open bottle of vodka in your hand?
Man: Oh, I had my laptop playing a DVD and the battery nearly died. I forgot my car adapter, so I was just trying to refill the battery.
Officer: With vodka?
Man: Yes, officer.
Officer: Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car so I can beat you senseless with my nightstick.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
With the popularity of wireless networks, it has become a pain to have to plug in the laptop to the electric outlet while you spent that money to set up a wireless entwork so that you could stay on the net without any wires.
Although network technology is much newer, it seems it has managed to progress faster than battery technology sofar.
Apple is one company who has done all they could to extend battery life (the G3 processor uses so little juice it helps a lot), but every company is still at the mercy of the limits of the battery companies.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Fuels cells to be allowed on planes
UNIX/Linux Consulting
This sounds pretty sweet. I do wonder if the cartridges would be refillable though. Changing them out and replacing them every other day could lead to a large pile of empty cans very quickly, even moreso if the technology catches on. While they are far better then dumping Li-ion batteries into landfills, refillible would still be better yet.
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
Until these things have a whiskey port, they will do me no good.
C'mon, man, truly practical computing!
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
... easy as pie! You flip open a little door on the battery and pour more fuel in! This is a highly complex operation, I know, but with practice, one day you too may be able to do it.
You'll no longer be looking for a spare outlet; you'll look for a can of butane/whatever.
A fuel cell -powered laptop seems like a bomb waiting to happen, but maybe I'm just reactionary and ill-informed.
An ethanol-powered PDA? It could double as a hip flask.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
In other news...
SpleenTech has announced plans for an addon to the digestion track exit that produces a new winged hybrid monkey. It is slated for release in Fall 2007.
Another [shrug] future possible product announcement, brought to you by the fine folks at SlashDot!
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That's not true. I was searched by a helpful, if not portly, security lady. She politely informed me that I was allowed to have only one lighter, not the two she found in my laptop bag. Helpfully, she allowed me to choose which of my two lighters I'd like to give to her. I chose the older one, as I am not the sentimental type and it was nearly out of butane. I was then allowed to board the aircraft and proceed safely to my destination.
So, you can take a butane lighter on board a plane, but only one at a time. On the other hand, you can easily order several alcoholic drinks like vodka which would combust very nicely from the comfort of your spacious seat.
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
Pretty brilliant Idea. I'm waiting for the days of a fuel cell cell phone. I'm probably at a gas station more often then I'm at home.
According to this article, getting a laptop onto a plane might soon become a little more difficult.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
The company I work for produces Methanol. In one of the boardrooms is a little acryllic car shaped object and inside is a tiny methanol powered fuel cell and a little supply of methanol. You flip the switch and a little electric motor starts turning a little wheel.
Sure, it's kind of stupid, but it's neat to be able to play with a real fuel cell.
I was wondering when they would come up with this. As things stand now, though, I think my next laptop is going to be an Apple. And if Toshiba can do it, so can Apple. (unless Toshiba patents fuel cells?) imagine a PowerBook (which does 5 hours with Li-ion) with a fuel cell... Better yet, imagine a B...
t erms. html)
---
Copy Protection: A clever method of preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it.
(from:http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/software.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Evidentally, someone forgot to refill the fuel cells on the server.
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
While I'm not a fan of toshiba laptops, I am glad to see a major manufacturer pushing this technology.
Batteries quite frankly suck and I travel alot. Expect at least 1 customer (me) to buy one of those fuel cell laptops.
One thing I do wonder though, is environmentally how will a disposed of fuel cell treat the environment as opposed to a disposed of battery?
"It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"
After September 11th, wouldn't airlines be quite wary of anything that could, if properly rigged by master terrorists, blow a hole in the fuselage large enough to down the plane?
They're jumpy enough that my friend, when he joked that he had "Yeah, and a big brick of C4" in his bag to a National Guard soldier, they detained him for 6 hours and -- I exaggerate not -- gave him a full cavity search, tore open his shoes, and destroyed his laptop looking for bombs.
Though it may be an advance, it may be banned from airplanes by paranoid maniacs like John Ashcroft.
Wow. That was a whole lot of nothing.
no specs? no pics? no nothing!
Ok, so someone is finally putting FC's to use in consumer electronics. Cool, I welcome it.
However, this story, like many before it, is VAPOR.
ANYONE can ANNOUNCE anything.
-Getting it tested, produced, and marketed- it is the amazing part.
This article states that we can only involves replacing the liquid fuel without shutting down the computer. But how do you get to the battery without shutting down the computer?
I highly doubt that Toshiba has strenously tested their fuel cell model for these new machines.
Is every engineer there totally confident and fully knowledgeable about all aspects of fuel cells? If so, then they surely know how to deal with:
- current limits
- bipolar plates
- Efficiency and open circuit voltage
- Efficiency and efficiency Limits
- Efficiency and the fuel cell voltage
Not to mention they should have a firm grasp on:
- The Effect of Pressure and Gas Concentration
- The Nernst equation
- Hydrogen partial pressure
- Fuel and oxidant utilisation
- Fuel Cell Irreversibilities - Causes of Voltage Drop
- Activation Losses
- The Tafel equation
- Reducing the activation overvoltage
- Summary of activation overvoltage
The last thing anyone wants is a fried laptop. Imagine walking away from your new Toshiba fuel cell-powered Pentium 5 laptop only to come back and find the screensaver off because the entire unit is charred like a cod on a plate of Fish 'N Chips!
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
here
The point is to not have to have batteries at all so you just pump it up with some butane/methane whatever every now and again. This is a HUGE upgrade, not having to replace/recharge PDA batteries every couple hours of use could improve screens and processor power. And to top it all off, means that the manufacturers will make more money selling NEW things.
You can bet that this is only the first of a coming shift in consumer electronics.
My mouse slipped and I accidentally modded you redundant instead of insightful... Oh well, I guess the others will correct that. Someone give him a point for me :-)
Of course the real thing blocking laptop fuel cell commercialization is the fact that we slash dot the hosting sites back to the stone age. Anyone have a mirror?
Was the server powered by one of these cells? 10 hours are up and the server runs dry.
Of an old Transactor Magazine cartoon with a 1541 drive and this huge engine/blower contraption up on top. There's this hick with a baseball cap claiming that it would back up disks in XX seconds...
But yeah, everytime I see news about fuel cell powered laptops, I imagine cranking over a two-stroke engine, pull cord, blue smoke, and noise!
Perhaps it's just the cold medication...
I stick to walls...
My site never went down when it was on slashdot. Well, I guess it didn't happen because it wasn't on the front page or in the article. Nevermind.
"Chuck, we got Slashdotted and we're out of fuel cells. Grab a bucket and make a run to Exxon, wouldja?"
wanted to read that too. gosh darn you geeks...
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
That's nice.
:P
:P)
:P) I'd be willing to go all fuelcell, save a small battery that would let me change carts without rebooting :P
Anyway, this is pretty cool. Although we'll have to see how the fueling method works. Some people mentioned a 'cigarett lighter' type thing you could buy, but we'll have to see how much of a 'revineu source' these companies consider it... It would kind of suck if they cost as much as the ink cartrages for most printers
Even if the price is down to $2-$3 a cart, I'd still rather go with the practicaly free eletrical power from an outlet then disposable carts.
And finaly, eletrical power is so cheap that most people don't mind if you just plug your stuff in. When I bring my laptop just about anywhere, I can feel confident I'll be able to find an outlet to plug it into. I could even get an adapter for my car (actualy, an 9vdc->120vac to plug my 120vac ->12vdc power brick, but hey it works
With these things, you're SOL. Personaly, I think it would be cool to combine the two into a hybrid solution, a 30min/1hr battery that you can charge while using via a plug or via the fuel cell system. That would really give you the best of both worlds.
Of course, when we can get fuel cell's for $0.20 and fill them up anywhere (say, people put natural gas taps in their kitchen or something
(oh, btw. I'm tying this in on a server machine, that dosn't happen to have any spell checking software installed. Now you can all see my horrible spelling in it's full glory!!!)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...to the statement. "My laptop's almost out of juice.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Looks like this is pretty old news. http://ne.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/2002/02/0130toshi ba_device.html
"Toshiba prototypes fuel cell-powered PDA
Feb 1, 2002
On January 2002, Toshiba held a technical exhibition at its Ome operations complex in Tokyo, where the company unveiled fuel cells currently under development for powering mobile devices. Toshiba made a demonstration by actually operating the company's PDA called "GENIO e." Although being under a stage of pilot testing, the fuel cell is capable of powering PDAs for two to three consecutive hours."
Humor folks, enjoy it! =)
Isn't that humor stuff supposed to be funny? Btw, research shows that humor is likely to be 87.3% less funy if it is labled as such.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It looks like The Fraunhofer Institute is joining the race to build Fuel Cells. Does this mean that my fuel cell can play MP3s? :)
walkpersons?
The problem with gas stations though, is those peksy snipers.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
mmyeah, and if Sony and Dell still made laptops with 500mhz P3 processors, we might get 8-hour PC laptops too.
(I'm not being entirely facetious, I actually think a slow processor, gobs of RAM, fast HD, super-battery-life laptop would be neat-o)
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Gosh! You mean that they are incompitent boobs? I'm sure that they are testing them and are working on technologies to deal with the various power/heat issues that fuel cells represent. They don;t want to sell you computers that kill themselves (inside the warranty period, at least).
I think EVRYONE learned the Great Powerbook Lesson.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
will a bell ring if the fuel door flap is left open? will there be a fuel gauge? I wonder if someone will invent a "carburetor" that gets like an insane 50 hours of battery life then mysteriously disappears?
One manufacturer is proposing to supply a 120 ml cartridge that last 10 hours on a laptop. The price is going to be an estimated $3 - $5 per.
Although wholesale costs for methanol are $0.33 per gallon. I'd be hesitant to pay five bucks to "recharge" my laptop once, OTOH I'd be willing to pay $2.50 for a gallon of methanol that's probably good for forty charges even though it might involve a bit of a hassle to transfer the liquid into "refill" containers.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Finally a use for that embarrassing gas problem I have!
Yup, it's there right next to the bat boy found in cave story.
Where will all our old things go?
China was going to stop taking them, weren't they?
I don't care about the tech industry needing to sell new toys. They are one of the big reasons there is so much pollution.
It would be great if it was alcohol like Tequila which fueled this babies then we could have gas stations like Homer Simpson dreamed about: one for you one for me...
Or maybe I'm just an old drunk...
New industries, once they take off, nearly always progress much more rapidly than established ones. People (Bill Gates for one person) say stuff like this comparing airlines and computers: "If airlines had improved as fast as computers in the last X years, we'd be traveling from New York to California for a dime in three minutes." Not a fair comparison.
Similar progress lines showup with you too. Learn to play tennis or something. At first you suck, but if you're trying at all you can get basic strokes and so on down quickly -- you'll get better pretty fast for a while. Then you hit a sort of lull, where you level off and it's frustrating how little progress you seem to make. Every now and again you'll get a little burst of progress for one reason or another -- often sparked by an external source like a new racket or something -- but there's no way the rate of change will go back to that early one. Ask a pro tennis player how much work it takes to dramatically improve her game at that level. There's a point of diminishing returns thing going on.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
A nice big burrito from Taco Bell should produce enough methane for 10 hours of use.
What ever happened to the Boxx Comportable?
Tablet, notebook, desktop hybrid, looked neat, but I don't think he ever got funded.
It has a little more info...
My Atari Portfolio lasts as long as 4weeks with only one battery load. Ok, it doesnt play DVDs on the other hand... ;-)
for the vast majority of applications - since people normally start and begin their day in a place where the the laptop can be recharged (through electricity or etanol or whatever).
10 hours will make it possible to use the thing on long flights or to spend a day working in the park/ on the beach. Not so with 4 hours.
Tor
No, it doesn't make sense. It's just what they had available.
In a few months, the troops in the airports will be issued the new Office Camoflage(tm) uniforms -- imprinted with line and color patterns designed to blend in with their surroundings, airport security personnel will soon be indistinguishable from filing cabinets, desks and office water coolers.
These uniforms will be supplied by the same company that brought us the Urban Camoflage(tm) designs that allow tanks and APCs to be concealed in plain sight on city streets -- protective side-panel paint schemes such as Parked Van, Wrecked Pickup and Abandoned Dumpster.
- - - - - - - - -
All kidding aside, the guy's friend exercised what I'd call dangerously poor judgment in choosing his remarks while dealing with cranky people in uniforms with guns.
TyZone
Battery life could be a lot better today, if people put less *crap* in their laptops. Let's do a rundown:
* Axe the CD-ROM drive. Who needs a CD drive on their laptop? Axe it, use large amount of gained space for battery space. Spinning CDs *eats* power.
* Make the screen smaller. Laptops used to have much smaller screens, and improvements in power usage haven't made up for the bigger size. Use a smaller screen. (Heck, there's a nice industry already doing this on an extreme scale with the Vaios and similar).
* Do not use an x86 processor. Repeat after me. Intel and AMD both make processors completely unsuited for laptop use.
* Get rid of the floppy drive. Use saved space for more battery. No one uses floppy drives any more.
* Axe the 3d hardware and extra video crap. No one is going to play Quake on their laptop anyway -- lousy form factor, and trackballs, trackpads, and nipples are all awful at Quake control.
* Have "premium" batteries. It costs more to make fancier, longer lasting batteries? Okay, do so and then offer both fancy and less fancy as an option.
May we never see th
Hmm... most cars are 12v now days...but anyway..
I could think of many places where fuel cells would definately be more readily available than AC outlets... As another poster already mentioned, on planes unless your in the buisness class most dont have any type of outlet. In other countries, risk frying stuff using a voltage adapter and figuring out which settings and plug adapters to use? nah, just go to the nearest liquor store and get some grain alcohol. Hiking/working in a wilderness area w/a laptop for whatever reason, be it simply to download pics off a digital camera, keep a journal, view maps, chart some native civilization etc. Recharging the fuelcell might be easier than finding an AC outlet nearby, most civilizations have alcohol in some form. Then again you could just drag around a solarpanel...
TM
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
I've noticed several posts by this guy in the last few days just spouting off techno-babble like he was still in school and learning this stuff as we speak. Which of course he probably is.
everytime I see a Fuel Cell powered Laptop I keep invisioning a laptop with a lawn motor engine on it.
and yes I know what a fuel cell is. just seeing the word fuel makes mne think of gassing up at the pump.
I am not a fuel cell expert, but from what I have read, fuel cells are powered by hydrogen. So instead of paying to refill cartigages with methanol(sp?), why can't we just use electricity to extract the hydrogen from water and put that in our fuel cell powered laptop. Then manufacturers could just make a simple device that pluged into the wall and would refill empty cartriages using water.
...after reading some of his other stuff, his trolls can be pretty funny. He might deserve the points after all.
Did you even think before submitting this post? And who modded it as insightful?
"* Axe the CD-ROM drive. Who needs a CD drive on their laptop? Axe it, use large amount of gained space for battery space. Spinning CDs *eats* power"
Oh, okay, good plan. Now I can install and run my software off of floppies. "Hey, where's install disk 649 of 700?"
"Make the screen smaller. Laptops used to have much smaller screens, and improvements in power usage haven't made up for the bigger size. Use a smaller screen. (Heck, there's a nice industry already doing this on an extreme scale with the Vaios and similar)."
Did you ever think that maybe some people (i.e. old businessmen) might have trouble using a small screen?
"Get rid of the floppy drive. Use saved space for more battery. No one uses floppy drives any more."
Okay, so now I can just install and run my software off of.. what? You mean I don't have any real input devices? I guess I could download warez copies of everything.
Please. A laptop without any functionality isn't even worth having. Even just for work, you still need a lot of battery-sucking stuff.
So what happens when everybody starts carrying these things onto planes? Will the airlines charge extra for the additional oxygen consumed? How much oxygen does one of these things use compared to a typical person?
...or does that read like the table of contents of a fuel cell textbook?
-Frank
Or does it have to come from dead dinosaurs?
If so, this sounds like a good way to keep us dependent on fossil fuels for a while longer yet.
*sigh*
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Hopefully, anyone and everyone will be able to make refills for this sort of thing and prices go way down as a result. CD-Rs come to mind. You might even be able to get them free after the rebate from CompUSA, as with CD-Rs. Time will tell....
Boom Shanka
Coleman is marketing a Fuel Cell, but it's hardly prime time, or convenient. Cost to refill is extremely prohibitive.
Maybe Toshiba has figured it out, but you have to wonder.
I don't see why we don't just use gasoline for all this stuff. Cell phones, laptops, PDAs... The generator that you would carry on your back wouldn't be much bigger than a weedeater motor, and you'd just have to take it off to pull it. If you have to go into an office, you can just leave the generator on the sidewalk and a flywheel will give you enough power to take a piss and come back. You could code all day long out on the beach... couple of 10 gallon gas cans in the car, a little ear and breathing protection and you're all set.
And besides, gas is cheap and will get cheaper with the calm in the middle east. I say "go gas". It's the American power source.
You see, I am in the slow process of building an electric vehicle, made from bicycle parts and a half-horsepower electric motor. I am not even sure it is going to work when I get it done, but for the time being, I am considering using gel-cells that would need to be recharged - I am figuring on 24-48 volts @ 14 AH - and even that will probably not be enough (I am planning on using muliple 12V gel-cells wired series/parallel style to get the volta/amps I need).
So, imagine if I could use such fuel cells instead, and have a fuel tank of methanol to run them. Maybe they might even run on other types of alcohol? Whatever, but this would allow me to get the range I want for my EV (provided they were cheap enough, which they probably won't be initially)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Alternate Fuel
http://www.iclei.org/efacts/altfuel.htm
Now at Wal-mart you can buy real power supplies, they cost about $15, 1.5-12 v and 1000mA capacity. They called "digital" power adapters, and are bascally switching PS. No-load volts are about the same as on load. They're kinda noisy (RF-wise) so they come with huge toroids. Seem to last longer than your usual transformer molded into plastic type (sample size 2 :). At Wal-mart, who would've thunk it?
-- begin quote
As another poster said, a universal wall-wart replacement would be ideal for laptops and largeish devices, and standard formfactor batteries would be ideal for smaller devices.
-- end quote
Check EBay for "universal" "laptop" "targus". Come with adapters for different laptops and cell phones. The device figures out the exact voltage your notebook/PDA/phone needs.
"Isn't that humor stuff supposed to be funny? Btw, research shows that humor is likely to be 87.3% less funy if it is labled as such. "
That beats the 97.164% less funny if nobody sees it because it was modded as 'off-topic'.
"Derp de derp."
What pathetic hardware would require you to shut down to switch batteries? Even assuming you don't simply have multiple slots and can thus have overlap, any civilized hardware (like, say, an ibook or powerbook) has just enough internal battery to sleep long enough for you to swap main batteries.
(Not to mention the detail of having charge meters built into the battery, and accessible whether it's in the computer or not. Handy when you'd like to know which of those bag of batteries is charged and which isn't.)
(So if that's ten hours running an intel chip, is that twenty hours running a powerbook?)
This will all be moot if laptops and PDAs are banned from filghts by the FAA because of ultra wideband wireless interference with GPS and other avionics systems. Since the flight crew can't tell if a computer or PDA is using ultra wideband wireless all may be banned.
Nate
But have they figured out how to get a floppy drive and a CD-Rom in the same computer at the same time?
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
It is not that polar co-ordinates are complicated, it is simply
that cartesian co-ordinates are simpler than they have a right to be.
-- Kleppner & Kolenhow, "An Introduction to Mechanics"
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