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Hitachi Shows Off A Fuel-Cell PDA

Posted by timothy on from the wouldn't-you dept.

prostoalex writes "Hitachi made a PDA, powered by a fuel cell. The device runs for 5 hours, and they plan to expand the battery power to 40 hours. It weighs 700 grams, which makes it heavier than most of the models out there. The commercial production will start next year, a picture is available from MobileMag." (This earlier mention of Hitachi's work talks about how such fuel cells could be used to charge or power other things, from cellphones to laptops.)

10 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Water as waste product by Ratface · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Is that a fuel-cell PDA in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me??"

    --

    A little planning goes a long way...
  2. Fuel Cell? Was gonna show a plutonium powered PDA by DarkHelmet · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...But some self-proclaimed doc stole the plutonium and left me a bunch of pinball machine parts.

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
  3. How much? by stecoop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Cool but how much does it save me over than using rechargeable Double-A batteries? I just hope the fuel cells aren't something like $400 for a $300 PDA.

  4. Shouldn't they just concentrate on laptops by mustrum_ridcully · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wouldn't it be a better idea if they concentrated on fuel-cell powered laptops instead of PDAs? I would kill to have a laptop whose battery lasted 40hours, and was topped-up using cigarette lighter gas (butane)!

    I don't see the battery manufactures jumping for about this one, if fuel cells do get sufficiently small and cheap then there'll be a few very worried companies out there.

    1. Re:Shouldn't they just concentrate on laptops by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That is the funny part, most people dont realize how much power generating capacity they have around them every day. I do long range biking and camping. My cellphone, zaurus, GPS, digital camera, and toshiba Liberetto all get recharged with either the solar panel I have, the Motorola hand crank charger they made 2 years ago for cellphones, or from the generator I have on the bike. I have never had to want for power on long camping/biking trips away from a car or electrical grid. Now some of you nature freaks will lose their mind at the amount of gear I carry with me but I prefer to document my travels and take gobs and gobs of photos (uploading to the liberetto at night is nice to clean out the CF cards and gives me a chance to look at the shots) I can recharge all my gear sitting and connected in the left rear pannier bag from the bike mounted generator that runs on a tire, within the 7 hours I am riding that day and is trickle charged by the Smallish solar panel on top of the pannier bags.

      this fuel cell devie is cool, but still nowhere near as clean and renewable as human power/solar... and their first products needs to be a pocket power source instead of a laptop or PDA.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  5. Hydrogen environmentally friendly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    qoute from the article:

    Although it has a greater cost then that of traditional power sources, it is completely 100 precent pollution-free.

    At the moment hydrogen is not environmentally friendly at all. It has te be chemically extracted from fossil fuels or electrically extracted from water. When the times comes that hydrogen is produced with truly clean energy (be it renewables or fusion) THEN is will be truly environmentally clean.

  6. Re:Methanol by millwall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not sure I'd like to walk with methanol in my pocket.

    People walk around with methanol lighters. Never really heard of anyone being so chicken that they can't even carry a lighter.

  7. Slashdot Summary Wrong -- Article More Surprising by InnovativeCX · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hitachi made a PDA, powered by a fuel cell...they plan to expand the battery power to 40 hours.

    This is incorrect. If the submitter were to take the time to read the actual article...or the editors...they would have noticed this more surprising tidbit:

    NEC Corp. has developed a notebook personal computer (PC) powered by a fuel cell that runs for five hours and plans to extend the operating time to 40 hours for commercial sale in 2005.

    Toshiba Corp. has developed a fuel cell-based notebook PC that runs for five hours and a handheld-device fuel cell that weighs 130 grams. Toshiba plans to commercialize them in 2005.

    While a PDA that runs for a paltry five hours and weighs over a pound isn't exactly impressive (quite the opposite, in fact), a laptop with a forty-hour battery [fuel cell] would be incredible. Not only would that solve the problem of waiting for endless charging cycles to complete, it would also resolve the issue of batteries losing their life over time (I type this on a PIII-900 Gateway that scarcely lasts an hour and half with a second battery installed).
    The only issue now seems to be rechargability, as I don't believe that this is possible with a fuel cell.

    In any case, this is a tremendous step forward.



    -Scott
  8. Re:Methanol by tantalus · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not sure I'd like to walk with methanol in my pocket. Hell, one whiff and you're blind... not sure even if it's allowed in a plane.


    Though it can be dangerous including causing retinal toxicity, ethanol comes far from blinding you with one whiff. You can read the World Health Organization's health and safety info for methanol here.

  9. Re:Methanol by ch-chuck · · Score: 5, Funny

    one whiff and you're blind

    Almost as bad is dihydrogen-monoxide, one 'whiff' of that stuff causes severe breathing problems. Did you know that many commercial foods are processed with dihydrogen-monoxide? We should boycott those as well.

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }