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."

Comments

Re:Nothing gets on planes.

[Charlton Heston]

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.

and... slashdoted...

[autopr0n]

That's nice.

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 :P

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 :P)

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 :P) I'd be willing to go all fuelcell, save a small battery that would let me change carts without rebooting :P

(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!!!)