Slashdot Mirror
NEC Unveils Methanol-Fueled Laptop
genericplacebo writes "Japanese computer giant NEC Corp. Monday revealed a prototype of a laptop computer that runs on a methanol fuel cell instead of a rechargeable battery, and said it will start selling it next year. NEC initially plans to introduce a computer with a fuel-cell system able to run for five consecutive hours on a single cartridge of methanol fuel, but also plans to make a PC within two years that can run continuously for as long as 40 hours."
Some might think that fuel cell is the greatest thing since Lithium Ion batteries but its really another way of getting money out of the poor consumer. The current range of IBM R40 centrino notebooks can provide you with 4 hours of battery life.
Laptop makers are looking for the high profit margins that ink jet printer manufacturers enjoy. How much will these full cell cartrages cost? Around $5 a pop? Thats absurd, wouldn't you rather recharge the fucking thing!
There is no god
I assume that you would still be able to plug into the wall to use your laptop when you don't want to use the fuel cell. The best part about this is the 'instant recharge' effect. You don't have to wait hours for your batter to recharge. If the market takes off you will be able to buy Methanol fuel cells at starbucks.
Laptops seems like a great market entry point for fuel cells.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
...I can see where these fuel cells will find their way onto the "Prohibited Items" list at airports all over the USA.
As it stands, even simple Bic lighters are prohibited and will be confiscated from all checked baggage... I can only imagine what they'd do with a methanol cartridge.
The point with this is that currently you cannot buy one. This is (one of?) the first methanol fuel cells laptops. Give it a year (frankly, year an a half given typical engineering development time estimates), then, and only then, will you have a choice.
Now, all that aside, I'd rather have the fuel cell system. Let's assume that they weigh the same, and run for a similar time on one charge, like you suggest. With a methanol fuel cell, a replacement charge will weight, what, 100g, cost around a dollar or two, and be field recharageable. This means that I can carry enough fuel to last a day of use without falling over. To do that same trick with batteries, you'd have to carry 5 spare batteries, each costing, what, 50-75 dollars [0], and weigh the thick end of a kilogram each. Not only that, but spare batteries have an interenal discharge rate, meaning that they cannot be stored indefinitly (It's about a month for NiCd, less for NiMh, dunno about Li technologies).
Granted, if you break a methanol cartridge, then it's not pleasant stuff. Mind you, nethers the contents of your typical battery.
The trade off is then you can carry much more fuel, but you'll need to find a specialist to get more, vs the limited fuel and easy refilling for battery technologies.
Once the runtime of a single cartridge of methanol gets up, to me that's a no brainer. YMMV
[0] Off top of head, no actual idea how accurate that is - it's based of raw cells.
Instead of developing this strictly for laptops, why not come up with a general-purpose methanol (or other) fuel-cell? One where you could have your choice of plug type, polarity, voltage, and AC or DC? Like one of those omni-usage wall-warts, but without the wall? If it were no bigger than, say, a six-pack, I bet it would be more than useful for travelers of any sort.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Seems to me that the proper approach would be to make a laptop that can run on either a battery or a fuel cell. If you're running near AC, run on battery and recharge occasionally. If you're on a 10hr flight or something and they havn't been thoughful enough to have accessory plugs on the plane for laptops and such, or if you're on safari in the middle of Africa, switch to the fuel cell.
The issue I'm worried about is that the laptop/fuel cell industry will to do what printer manufacturers did for the printer. In other words, make the fuel cell hardware cheap and affordable and price-fix the actual fuel refill components as high as possible to maximize profits. The old razor blade pricing scheme.
From what I understand of fuel cells, besides requiring the fuel itself which is rather cheap, it requires a rather expensive (and no-doubt proprietary) catalyst component (platinum?) which sort of throws the "refill at home" idea out.
Maybe you could get 5x methanol refills before replacing the catalyst or something, but I'm waiting to see what the pricing of the fuel technology will be before jumping onboard.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
As far as I understood, the whole advantage of fuel cell based laptops was you could simply open a spout and pour more fuel into it, like a camp stove. If, instead, you must buy proprietary cartridges like printers, I don't see why people would opt for a fuel cell based computer rather than a conventional rechargeable battery. In fact, the proprietary scheme you described above would be rather more like a laptop which runs on non-rechargeable batteries! I can't imagine anyone buying such a thing.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?