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Fuel Cells Promised For Next Year

Posted by timothy on from the how-about-a-fuel-cell-ogg-player dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in today's New York Times, fuel cells for portable consumer electronic devices will start appearing next year. First for laptops, and later for smaller devices like cellphones. Among the interesting benefits of fuel cells over batteries is the ability to swap cells without having to power down the device." The article mentions the Toshiba cells demonstrated at CeBit, and -- no surprise -- Japan is likely to be the first market for these tiny fuel cells.

3 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. No power off for swapping ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Geee, this was really lame. There are laptops
    allowing you to swap batteries with no power-off.
    In simplest case you put them in suspend.

    Also the swapping is completely unrelated to
    type of the energy source - it is just a matter
    of extra electronics with some capacitors/recharable accus on-board for
    keeping notebook running for 2-3 minutes needed
    for swapping the battery.

  2. Re:I am Bender... by saskboy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    So you are saying we have to wait until about the year 3000 [Futurama], before we have fuelcell powered robots? It makes sense now why Bender is so drunk all the time.

    As for the moderator who marked my above comment as "overrated" you could see it was a perfectly valid question, with a perfectly "informative" answer waiting for it.

    --
    Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
  3. Re:I'll believe it when I see it by dynoman7 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    My patience is being tried ...when it really does arrive I'll be skeptical about it.

    GWB does /.

    --
    Blarf.