Fuel Cells To Appear In Laptops In 2004

prostoalex writes "The overhyped fuel cells will finally be delivered to the portable computing market. Toshiba and NEC will incorporate fuel cells into the laptops by 2004. Sony, Hitachi and Casio are expected to follow the suit. The tests show a fuel cell lasting 10 hours. With the form-factor of a Bic lighter, it allows the laptop user to carry a few extra cells in the laptop bag all the time. Battery prices are expected to run at about $200."

Comments

The most important thing article doesnt mention...

[ultrapenguin]

Is how much do the refills cost? Surely, 100ml or whatever of methanol is going to last you for 10 hours, but what do you do then?
You can't regenerate it, so you go shopping for a refill?

Why only one?

[Squareball]

If one fuel cell lasts 10 hours and is the size of a bic lighter.. why not use 2 or 3 of them, or just make the one bigger to give more life between charges?

Why do I get the feeling...

[woobieman29]

That the manufacturers will pull an 'Ink Jet Cartridge' here and make it so that these things are not (easily) refillable? Plan on having to buy these only from the manufacturer, at a ridiculously inflated price. The whole Ink Jet cartridge BS is the main reason I stepped up and bought a laser printer for home use.

Re:Inflammable means Flammable? What a country!

[agent dero]

The "portable bomb" issue is ridiculous, what about a water bottle filled with vodka, or propane, natural gas (can't smell it!)

I understand caution, but unless they restrict ALL liquids and bottles, they can't really prevent the "portable bomb" issue

Anyways, a savvy airline would PROHIBIT them as carry ons, and then sell them to users on board, like the movie theaters do with food.

What's *not* a potential weapon?

[Atario]

Isn't the laptop you carry now a potential weapon? Pretty dense and heavy, with sharp corners. Would make a nice dent in anyone's head.

And how about those hard, bony hands you have there? One good punch from those could knock someone out!

Or those teeth in your head! Sharp and hard and rigged up to a very strong and effective system of musculature -- you could maim with those things!

Better get rid of all of 'em.

Re:Just use alkaline AA batteries?

[Zed2K]

And in the meantime your tossing tons of batteries into the trash that don't need to be there.

I've got a few sets of rayovac 1800 alkaline rechargables that I use in my digital camera that last longer than a normal set of non-rechargable alkaline batteries.

Not Untill The Recharges Are "Free"

[MBCook]

I'd like more battery life just as much as the next guy, but I don't intend to replace my laptop's batteries untill recharges are "free".

Right now, how does it work? I use my battery, and it gets low. Then I plug my laptop in and after a short time, the battery is "magically" refilled, and it didn't cost my any money (my electric bill, but that's a few cents max). I can recharge my laptop ANYWHERE I can find an outlet, which is just about anywhere.

Now for the fuel cell battery. I use my battery and it's gone. Now I have to recharge it with a new little lighter sized cartridge thing. I don't want to pay $5 for 'em. I don't want to pay $1 for 'em. If I got a few refillable fuel "cartridges" when I bought my laptop and some kind of home refuling station that would use my natural gas line or something, I would consider it, maybe. I'll take my 3 or 4 hour battery life over your 10 since mine is free. And when do I need 10 hours of battery life anyway? Most people probably don't, as they could probably find places to plug in by then.

So how do you get me to do something like this? Make a fuel cell battery that works with something like pure hydrogen and oxygen. It mixes them to make electricity and stores the water in a little compartment. Then when I plug my laptop into the wall, it uses the electricity to reseperate the water into hydrogen and oxygen and stores them back in their own little compartments. Basically a sealed system that works just like a standard battery. I really don't care what's in it, or how it works, but unless it works a LOT like a battery, I'm not terribly interested. I'm not paying for what I get for "free".

Re:Not Untill The Recharges Are "Free"

[Kaz Riprock]

Is this a troll? When do you need 10 hours of life? How about crammed into the economy class of your favorite airline with Lizzie McGuire as the only movie on the flight...Or on any one of a number of long distance trips (train, bus, etc).

What about outside on a park bench enjoying some summer air while you do your work by wireless LAN?

Mixing pure hydrogen and oxygen? Storing pure oxygen in something small and lightweight enough to carry around without a wheelchair? If you can tether yourself for enough time to gain a full charge often enough to run off of a 2 hour battery (and I'm not talking about playing a few mp3s with the lid down but using the DVD-ROM full screen while powering your wireless card, USB optical mouse, and 15" LCD screen...) which would give you about 45 minutes to move about before your hibernate function kicks in...

You have to be joking. A 10 hour fuel cell that I can refill with my mixture of methanol/water from home (actually, I'd just steal from the lab) is a great idea...at only a fraction of the cost more than a replacement battery every few years!

Re:Not Untill The Recharges Are "Free"

[MBCook]

No, it's not a troll. I don't need 10 hours of life. I don't take many flights. When I do, they don't tend to be that long, my four hours of battery life can cover me. For an international flight or something else that would be that long, I'd get a power adaptor that would let me plug into the plane, or I would carry an extra battery. I realise that having 10 hours of battery life would be very handy for many people, but many people (like me) just don't need it.

Sitting on a park bench while enjoying summer air? This is /.! OK, all joking aside, I don't have wireless lan and even if I did, I can't see myself sitting for more than 2 or 3 hours outside using my laptop. For one thing I've found laptop screens can be hard to read in sunlight, and either way I'm not an outdoors person (allergies). Again, my batteries could cover me for what I'd do.

I used the oxygen/hydrogen thing as an example. As for charge time, I usually let my laptop charge overnight.

I would like a 10 hour battery too, and I would need to be able to refill it at home, but I'm NOT going to pay someone $5 for a few hours worth of fuel because you can't recharge it anywhere there is an electrical outlet the way my battery can.

Re:Not Untill The Recharges Are "Free"

[jonbrewer]

Right now, how does it work? I use my battery, and it gets low. Then I plug my laptop in and after a short time, the battery is "magically" refilled, and it didn't cost my any money (my electric bill, but that's a few cents max). I can recharge my laptop ANYWHERE I can find an outlet, which is just about anywhere.

Yeah, but your lithium-ion battery lasts what, 18 months? Two years? And how long does it retain full capacity? Six months? I'll gladly ditch my batteries for fuel cells if they'll last the life of the device. My 1998 Thinkpad 770 is on its fourth Li-ion battery, and they haven't been cheap.

Lets hope they standardize cartridges

[Martin65]

I just hope that the various manufacturers can standardize their cartridges so they become interchangable from one model laptop to the other !!! THIS would be a feature I'd pay for.

Re:Methanol should be cheap (11cents a gallon)

[MBCook]

Ink should be cheap too, but people pay $30 or more for ink cartriges that hold next to nothing, because that's how the printer market has structured it's self. I don't want to end up paying $5 for an emergency refill since I won't be able to plug my laptop in to recharge it.

But I get your point, and I agree. I'm just saying things don't always work like that.

Re:What will it be powering?

[ProfessionalCookie]

'course you can get a lil one to run 10+ hours if you're using a 200Mhz Transmeta with no optical drive and a itty bitty 10" screen. I think that's what they mean by "it will last 10 hours." In reality I don't expect this bic lighter to last any longer than my current battery.

If I had a 2Ghz P4 I wouldn't expect it to last more than 2 hours.

My bet is that those 10 hour estimates rely on future expected power saving advancements (read: Vapor!).

"overhyped laptop fuel cells"

[bbc22405]

"Overhyped laptop fuel cells"? That is right on the money. The first market for small fuel cells is not in laptop computers. There are too many places where you can plug in a laptop to (a) avoid using the batteries and (b) recharge your batteries. People will be willing to stop by Computers-R-Us to pick up another 10-pack of methanol capsules, when instead they can just plug in just about anywhere? No way.

I predict that the first and best market for small fuel cells, and where the technology will incubate until it is ready to spread wider, is in hand tools for construction workers (e.g. house framers). They already use tools that chew through multiple battery packs in a workday. They also already have tools (nailers) that are both battery powered and have small fuel tanks that are used to generate small explosions. They are ready and willing to deal with fuel cells that might be noisy, hot, smelly, and perhaps even slightly dangerous. I'm sure they would welcome a tool that chewed through cheapy single-use methanol tanks, rather than having to carefully rotate through an assortment of battery packs every day, sometimes at a site without electrical service.

Re:Worth the risk?

[evilviper]

The battery is the heaviest component of a laptop

Uhh... All I can say is that you are completely wrong. Batteries aren't very heavy compared to the notebook itself, and even if they were, Li-Ion batteries are quite light as well.

It's going to be the CD/DVD drive that will be mitigating factor in laptop size, that is, until we all get on board with smaller, alternative media, like USB memory keys or smart cards of some sort.

Not going to happen. Nothing else can be nearly as cheap as "dumb" media, like optical discs. Smart devices like CompactFlash are always going to be significantly more expensive than CDs/DVDs, unles there is a very very major breakthrough in technology, which I don't expect for the next decade.

The best you can hope for is minidiscs getting to be popular.

But besides that, small notebooks are small enough as it is. Much smaller and you wouldn't be able to type reasonable well. The space the CD takes up really isn't that significant in the big scheme of things.

As for the large notebooks, it certainly isn'th the CD-ROM that makes them large.