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Battery Development Off The Beaten Path
Roland Piquepaille writes "Let's face it. Our computing devices are going faster year after year. But our laptop batteries don't show the same performance improvement. They still work only for a few hours, just a little bit more than ten years ago. Several companies want to change this, according to this UPI report, 'Nanotechnology improving energy options.' For example, mPhase Technologies plans to introduce smart batteries based on millions of silicon nanotube electrodes. These nanobatteries, to be introduced before the end of 2005, will last longer than traditional ones and will be respectful of our environment. Meanwhile, Konarka Technologies wants to reduce the weight of batteries with its flexible solar-fueled nanobatteries. You'll find more details and pictures in this overview."
Do you need nano-tweazers to replace your battery then ??
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Batteries is one area that has been laging behind the rest of the tech indutstry. With all the growth, batteries are very similar in technology to where they were 10 or 15 years ago.
All the big talk is about fuel cells. Will these batteries really show much improvement or is it another marketing ploy
Evolution or ID?
I have always wondered why nuclear batteries have not been used in more electronics. They last practically forever!
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
Does anyone else see a problem with a battery that requires a voltage change in order to provide power? Will we need old fashioned batteries for our new high-tech batteries?
if you think this is bad, you should have seen my last sig
"These nanobatteries, to be introduced before the end of 2005, will last longer than traditional ones and will be respectful of our environment."
What odd grammar. "Can you not see I am respectful of the environment?! Do not disrepect the spirits of your elders, buy Mr. Power Extra Subueteo Batteries now!"
How there is so little development in the energy sector.
Im serious.
Weve been using the same fuel for ages. That fuel explodes.
Perhaps Im jaded, but why, exactly, cant we economically synthesize fuel? (Perhaps that goes against the laws of thermodynamics?)
Meh.
Im bitter.
... you insensitive clod!
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
If they could only make smaller hamsters, they could fit more in each battery. Thankfully we can plan on having nano-hamsters any day now thanks to the wonders of genetic engineering!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I thought Buckyballs killed fish?
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
I think these new battery developments has more than just applications for longer-lasting batteries for laptops, PDA's and cellphones.
It could also mean substantially lighter battery pack units for hybrid drivetrains. A big issue with hybrid drivetrain cars is the fact the battery pack does take up quite a lot of space and also contributes to the deadweight of the car. By switching to these newer battery technologies they could reduce the size of the battery pack, which means more interior space and possibly even better fuel efficiency since when the gasoline engine is running you use less fuel because the car is now lighter.
I didn't see anything about the proposed cost of such a battery. I would guess it would be prohibitively expensive.
That said, CPUs and other components are designed these days to eat up less and less power, so perhaps there isn't even a need for more efficient energy storage?
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
Maintaining the same life in devices that have exponentially grown in power consumption sure seems like improvements to me.
-/bin/true successfully doing nothing day after day.
...and thus having to deal with warranty cases for batteries on a daily basis, I am still waiting for the battery that holds longer than the warranty periods on 'wearable parts'... With one charge that is.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
"These nanobatteries, to be introduced before the end of 2005, will last longer than traditional ones and will be respectful of our environment."
Heh. I read this and immediately thought of the Simpsons episode with Mr. Sparkle. "Can you not see I am disrespectfull of dirt!"
i can picture tryin to tell my girlfriend that the remote control takes Nanno AAA not alpha AA
It's about time, finally our protable devices won't have to trade off performance for longevity.
Of course in the not so distant future we will need to find new energy scources as our consumptions rise. Which of course would stem from manufacturers no longer trying to make energy efficient portable devices.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
Seriously, "respectful" is a very odd word to use there. If you're talking about "they are recyclable", or "they can be disposed of without leaching chemicals bad for [people, plants, animals] into the water table", then say so. Inanimate objects do not feel nor care about the welfare of life on earth.
--
Evan "The sign into Davis, CA proudly reads 'Nuclear Free'. What a negative town."
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
But what about the nanotubes? Didn't something get published recently about the longevity and toxicity of nanotubes and buckyballs? Or am I way off my rocker here?
Less is more.
They have gas-battery powered cars, so how about gas-battery powered laptops? And for the long airline lights just make sure it can handle jetfuel.
It's too bad nobody has found an effective way to "resuse" the heat generated by laptops to recharge the batteries.
Maybe we'll come full circle and have wind-up laptops; as your laptop starts slowing down, just wind it up.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Perhaps this can be tied into yesterday's Slashdot story with athe Army?
Hmmm.
With computers getting faster and faster, doesn't it seem like batteries ARE getting better, simply to keep up with the higher power requirements of new devices. Sure you still only get 2,3, or 4 hours of battery life... but would a battery from 1990 even provide half as long a life as a battery from 2000 or 2004?
Sig!
I dont know about you all, but Ive never really had that much of a problem with the life of my charges -- im rarly away from a 110v plug for more than a few hours (unfortunatley).
What we really need is a standard induction charging scheme. Where I can carry my gadgets around, and not worry 'bout carrying one-wall-wart per device around all the time. If Im at *your* house, I put my device on your charger for a few minutes while we have a tea... if im at work, i set it on my desk (as i do now, sans the specific wall-wart ive left at home).
Putting the devices on an induction-charging station would make the duration of the charge moot... it would CERTAINLY be much longer than time spent between these pads....
Nano-silicon and nano-aluminum for nanobatteries.
Nano-Wow! This is nano-cool! I can't nano believe the nano-things they can nano-do with these nano-days with chemistry and materials science. It's nanoriffic!
The VC's must be jumping all over this e-battery.co^H^H^H^H^H nano-battery.small stuff.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Batteries have been in development for the better part of two hundred years (ignoring posible evidence of even earlier batteries used for electro plating in greco-roman periods) the fact that after this much time the tech is for the most part a a platue is expected, to be fair the advances that we are having now are very impressive when you think about how much work has gone into this field.
electric computers on the other hand are just over 50 years of serious development, advances should be more rapid in this field.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
One thing is for certain, they won't give these batteries away. If they tried to no one would take them...
Imagine "Battery sir... no charge"
For problems, seek only the simplest solution, complexity brings with it more problems.
I always thought the seeming lack of battery longevity improvements was more from end-user manufacturer designs than from technology improvements.
It seems to me that the manufacturers of products that use these batteries know what an acceptable length of time between charges is for their product and may not see the need to improve much upon that. What they do is convert the improved length-of-life to smaller electronics. They reduce the size of their product (smaller battery) while maintaining how long it can last between charges.
That is because petroleum and other fossil fuels are the apex of energy sources. We will never do any better, than this cheap and clean source.
This post was made possible by a grant from Dick Cheney and Halliburton Energy.
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
I think you're just stupid.
They're just trying to get the point across that these batteries (claim, anyway) will not be harmful to the environment.
Grow up, please.
Why do I have a vision of tiny little robots running on thousands of little treadmills...
Oh wait, that's a perpetual motion machine...
Super-iron battery
An article in C&ENews (16/8/99) describes a new high-energy battery developed in Israel using iron as the cathode material. The new batteries store 50% more energy than the alkaline battery which uses a zinc anode, manganese dioxide cathode and potassium hydroxide electrolyte. The new cathode material which replaces the MnO2 has been termed 'super-iron' by Stuart Licht, Baohui Wang and Susanta Ghosh its inventors, however, it is not iron metal but an iron(VI) compound. iron(VI) is an unusual high oxidation state of iron which is strongly oxidising, an important property of a cathode material in a battery. These ferrate(VI) compounds have formulae such as K2FeO4 or BaFeO4. In operation the iron(VI) is reduced to the more stable iron(III) according to the cell reaction:
2MFeVIO4 + 3Zn -- FeIII2O3 + ZnO + MZnO2
The problem with using iron(VI) compounds before has been their stability. However, the researchers discovered that they were stable for months in KOH if the iron(VI) compounds were free from nickel(II) or cobalt(II) impurities. The material has a high energy density and a high electrical conductivity so it can be discharged rapidly. The cathode is also compatible with nickel hydride anodes and shows some degree of rechargeability. It is a long way from laboratory to supermarket, but we may well see 'super-iron' batteries on the shelf in the next millennium.
(Science 285, 1039, 1999)
******
Fuck off Mercatur, you cam whore!
I can get 6 hours on my T40 at max performance, and if I alter the power profile to save power, I can get between 7-8. No kidding.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
I just use pocket fusion!
I have no idea what all that shit about peanut butter was. Who is the peanut butter guy?
Since we obey the 2nd law of thermodynamics in this house, young lady, by definition it will take more energy to synthesize a fuel that can be obtained naturally.
The fuel that explodes, as you trollishly point out, has the nice property of having a remarkably high energy density, which means a little goes a long way. Again, those pesky laws of physics and chemistry rear their ugly heads.
I'm sorry that reality is not which you wish, but maybe the problem is not with reality, but rather the wishing?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Tech devices today know they have limited power to work with. They figure in and try to save every lst drop.
Years ago, they didn't figure for this. They had all the power they needed.
So, and I know this from my college studies in the area, batteries have not grown very much over the last decade. They are pretty much the same.
Evolution or ID?
... it's making the damned nano-wheels small enough for them to fit inside.
Listen assfuck, mercatur has never whored herself.
Yes, she begs for money. Yes, she advertises for a boyfriend. But she never gives anything in return! Not so much as a flash of tit. NOTHING!
Battery hype has been around for a century. If you've followed the electric car industry, you're familiar with the frustrations of listening to new battery technology claimants. A basic problem is that more powerful battery technologies tend to require more reactive materials, ones further from the center of the electromotive scale. Lithium has been made to work, but it took a long time and a few laptop fires. Sodium-sulfur batteries seem to be too dangerous. There are some workable chemistries, like silver-cadmium, that require overly expensive materials. Thus, there are some high-power battery technologies which have been successfully demonstrated but aren't going mainstream. The mPhase people aren't even at that point.
This is a consistent problem with Piquepaille's blog. He comes across some overhyped press release and writes it up as a "technology trend". He seems to want to be the next George Gilder, who you may remember as a pundit from the days of dot-com hype.
I am not sure what you mean in that there have been no changes in battery technology. Just because the run times have not changed does not mean there have not been improvements. So 4 years ago we were running on Pentium 400 Processors with 12-13" screens as normal. Now we are running on 2.0-2.8Gig machines with 14-15" screens as normal. With the same or better run times. Not only that, but the batteries are smaller and less expensive. Just because run time has not changed does not mean that the battery technology has not improved. It only means that as the performance of the device using them improved, the battery makers improved the performance enough to keep the run times the same. I think that is an achievement.
apparantly hes the brother of the guy who used to sit on her couch and they fucked last weekend or something (which annoyed the shit out of the couch guy, who called himself frank or something).....
1. Boring, but important technology
2. Boring tech + "nano"
3. Profit!!!
"I'm disrespectful to dirt! Can you see I am serious? Out of my way, all of you! This is no place for loafers. Join me or die. Can you do any less?"
Mr. Sparkle
Last year I had an 800mhz AMD Duron Sony Vaio that lasted about 45 minutes on battery (if I was lucky).
This year I have an iBook G4 with a battery that lasts 4-7 hours. I'd call that a performance improvement.
This post was meant for battery power vehicles, but the tecnology applies to small devices as well. Battery technology is massively in advance of where they were 15 years ago. Viable battery powered vehicles are hear now. They're just still bloody expensive.
The current battery technologies are:
Lead acid: 200 year old technology. Give this a performance index of 1. It's cheap and simple.
NiCd: Heavy metals but good high current. Performance of 2x the lead acid. Performance 2.
NiMH: Getting rid of the heavy metals. Lighter as well. Performance of around 3x that of a lead acid battery.
LiON: Light, performance 5 x that of a lead acid battery.
They obviously get more expensive the more advanced they are. You can expect to get around 70-80miles out of a lead acid battery. Multiply that by the performance factors for the newer technologies.
New technologies, still up and coming. Used in small scale applications, mobile phones, laptops.
Li-Poly. Lighter and can handle more cycles than LiON but not much more power.
Lithium Sulphur batteries (Li-S) promise to more than double the capacity of LiON batteries, 10X that of a lead acid battery. That's a 700-800 mile range on a single charge, not even Diesel vehicles get that. I think these will do the job of killing petrol vehicles. Superior performance, superior range.
Basically. You don't discard the batteries when they wear out. Trade them in at 100,000 miles and get a "new" or refurbished set.
This *is* all nifty technology but still expensive due to manufacturing capacity.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It only seems like power sources are not improving, but they are. We just don't notice because our devices use up all that extra power. I wish there were more development of low-power CPUs and displays - when is OLED due?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"These nanobatteries, to be introduced before the end of 2005, will last longer than traditional ones and will be respectful of our environment."
Of Course the designers and manufacturers and consumers could give a rats ass about respecting the enviornment....these things where made for longer battery life...Period.
This is justs one more example in which efficiant compeditive economics HELP the enviornment...I wish the dumb ass socialist enviornmentilists would realize this. OF course they already do...they just don't want anyone to point it out...becouse their motives lean more to socialism rather then enviornmentalism.
stendec@gmail.com
... some one from the Uk spy services went to Exide batteries because their spy radios were hampered by the fact that the current charge density / weight / volume of batteries was too low and resulted in low battery life or a spy radio that was bigger and heavier than the spy who was supposed to carry it...
The Exide mas was asked if they could increase the charge density somehow, the response was immediate, "Yes."
The spook was somewhat nonplussed, as this was not the answer he was expecting, so he then asked if Exide could do it, why didn't they?
This response was also immediate.
"We sell more batteries."
That was 60 years ago, why does anyone think anything has changed?
(esp when detroit is now producing SUV's that get worse mileage than 50 year old 500 cubic inch big block engined cars)
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
not by smart batteries, but by smart chargers.
When I was at U-Mass lowell, we had a guest speaker who worked with search and rescue robotics and was trying to start a small company to sell them to fire departments. He used dewalt drill batteries, in 18v configurations.
being in a robotics course ourselves, a lot of our questions focused on them. Being expensive and shortlived, the speaker explained that the newest line of dewalt drills had some sort of mechanism to 'recognize' different batteries. to keep the life long-lasting and decrease wasted charge time, the charger would be able to tell how many charges it had given this battery, would know when to stop, and would know enough not to 'hot charge' a battery that just came off of use.
of course, some other people want to do away with storing potential electricity alltogether, given the large amount of weight/stuff you need to store it. that's where stuff like fuel cells come in. store a fuel that we can easily convert to electricity instead, that might be lighter and take up less space and might hold more potential electricity.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Because, almost every time a new technology thretens existing markets, some company buy the rights to the new invention and patents it. I have here of a battery that uses sugar to generat the current.
At least in the way we are using them. A small diesel, constantly running at a set RPM, generating electricty should be more efficient than these on/off gasoline engines and their batteries.
We don't need better batteries for cars, we just need to move off of the current combustion engine to a cleaner more available fuel.
Finally, there are gas and diesel powered cars that get better mileage than hybrids, and I am talking demonstratable mileage, not what you see on the EPA tag.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
...a giant horse water trough full of water and algae, on wheels? We read about Electric Algae yesterday on /., right? DO WE FORGET SO SOON? :oP
do() || do_not();
These nanobatteries, to be introduced before the end of 2005, will last longer than traditional ones and will be respectful of our environment.
I miss the good old days, when you could chuck a battery into the woods and melt the skin off passing wildlife. Yeah, those were the days.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
My laptop runs out of power, and there's enough energy stuck to my buttocks to launch a space shuttle. Bottom line: (giggles...) Eat less, save money, buy more batteries.
Playing minesweeper all day doesn't count as 'using' your machine. ;)
How about reducing power consumption instead of increasing battery life. Yes, I know that people are working on lower and lower power CPUs etc, but these are just low powered versions of our conventional, tied-to-the-wall desktop machines.
For truly low powered processors, we need asynchronous logic. Current CPUs, when nothing is happening, close down bits that they think are not being used and slow their clock rate. This reduces, but does not eliminate, power consumption. Asynchronous logig, on the other hand, whenit is not doing anything - does nothing. Nothing clocks, nothing changes state.
Then the displays. We need ambient light displays, as opposed to self-illumiated ones. We don't usually sit in the dark, to why have a dispalay that assumes we do? Some of these are being sold as "digital paper" or similar. Unlike CRT, LCD or Plasma, when the display is not changing, they consume no power. Only B/W so far, I believe - but I would rather a B/W display I can read than a ulesless lump with a flat battery.
Which means that we need to rethink the OS. The steady state of the screen must be still. We are fattening ourselves up on animated this and that. We need to rethink this. We need to research hoe to make the pointer flip the minimum number of pixels as it moves. A flashing cursor is a waste of energy: find better ways of indicating the current position. Maybe WYSIWIG is too expensive: go back to type-and-preview: only a single character changes for each keystroke, so only about 30x20 pixels need redrawing. And scroll by a few lines at a time, so that you don't have to scroll often.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Someone needs to come up with a way to recycle the heat back into power that's burning my thighs when number crunching or playing games.
Stupid entropy.
1. Lead acid is somewhat forgiving, and can theoretically last forever if you are mostly careful not to do a deep discharge. Most other designs have a finite number of cycles.
2. Price. It's an old technology. Car manufacturing has driven the development, and you are pretty certain to get a functional battery that does what it's supposed to.
There are two downsides.
1. No deep discharge. Once the voltage starts to drop a little, you better get back home to recharge or the battery will be dead (not sure of the chemistry involved.)
2. Low temperature functioning. Lead acid batteries cool down as you draw current from them. If you take them out for a midnight ride in the winter, you will find your voltage dropping much quicker than you expect. NiCads actually generate heat as you discharge them, and so can keep functioning even in freezing conditions.
As I understand, for these second two reasons, most commerically available bicycle lights are now NiCad. This should mean you can go for a three hour bicycle ride and draw twenty watts of light. However, it does mean that you have to replace the batteries every other year or so (depending on usage.)
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
It's marked funny because it's an obviously idiotic suggestion that people assumed was a joke.
Really, you want to put plutonium, polonium, or other dirty bomb materials in the hands of the general public? The same public that currently tosses NiCd batteries into the trash when they're done with them? SRGs are a wonderful idea for military, for space, and for other heavily regulated and monitored uses (where RTGs are already used), but they're a horrible idea for the mass market.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This is not a eco-friendly technology. Recharging a battery is a slo-o-ow death. Recycling produces a weaker battery that costs more than a new product. My techno-fantasy: A recycled power product that cost as much (or less) and performs as well as a new item.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
How about simply making a couple DC plug types as standard as AC plugs are? It's ridiculous that you can go down the cell phone accessories aisle and find half a dozen chargers that all do the same job but are mutually incompatible with each other and with AC adaptors for other electronics. I still need to go back to Fry's and return a Nokia adapter that turned out to be the wrong Nokia adapter...
... (for non-engineers :) might fit in here.
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm
CC.
No, the main point is longer lasting or lighter batteries. The "respectful to the environment" is just standard (badly translated, but still standard) marketing spiel.
if you think this is bad, you should have seen my last sig
In this months Popular Science, they were running a brief article in the "What's New" section (sorry, not available online) that talked about a company using the technology in the "bed-of-nails" nano-battery to make materials that could be made either extremely hydrophobic or hydrophilic with the flick of a switch. This has the potential of making rather efficient mechanical systems by increasing the effectiveness of lubricants a great deal. Interesting that it's also being used to make batteries.
Their RPC cells seem to have a power and convenience advantage over almost everything else.
Here's a more informative description of some of the technology being used by Konarka. Looks pretty interesting to me.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
size, power, and duration: choose any two.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
Cheap,Clean,Long Charges.
Pick 2.
Come on, people. Look at the wattage of a CPU from today versus a CPU from 10 years ago. Look at the differences in power consumption on the various devices. We've got thousands of times more transitors in current systems.
Despite the power consumption increasing dramatically, batteries do in fact keep a system running longer than they used to. That's not lagging behind, that's keeping pace.
Silly glass-half-emptiers.
If there was anything in the article that screamed "bogus" to me it was the following quote:
"We can get to the point where the initial cost can be competitive with the electric grid," McGahn told UPI. "If we had a 10-mile-by-10-mile square, we could power the country."
Excuse me? Really? I have a hard time believing that there aren't a couple power utilities snapping this up if it's true. I suspect this is at best a bit of hyperbole. And as such have to question the reliability of a reporter that would print such a statement unchallenged.
But maybe I'm just cranky at having an 8 pound laptop with half the weight being battery...
Admittedly this would decrease your range, but there are ways of mitigating this as well. You could have it plugged in to the wall in the garage and have an alarm clock that told it to use wall power to heat the seat and the air in the car for 5 minutes before you leave for work each day, which would mean that the batteries would only need to keep the passenger compartment warm, not heat it initially.
If this became a real efficiency/range issue you could look into better insulation for the car, including an aerogel sandwhich for the windows and insulation in the roof.
Lasers Controlled Games!
http://www.quantumscientific.com/pclock.html
How many to run my laptop?
You have some interesting points, provided that reality is ignored. Modern mobile devices have also made tremendous advances in reducing power consumption for individual components, a fact your tirade conveniently ignores.
The editors and article say battery tech has not imporved much in 10 years. That is bull, the battery tech avalible to consumers have improved a great deal thanks to NiMh and Li-ion, they were huge strids over each other and over Ni-Cad. The trouble is the improvements in batteries have failed to out pace the greater demand for power by our faster procs and systems that depend on active cooling. Based on the aperage and consumption of my T40 vs my old 486 Nec Versa V the Versa would run all day off my Think pad battery.
I drove beetles for years. They sucked in the Winter, especially around town because you never built up enough heat to circulate into the passenger compartment to get comfortable or defrost the windows. On the highway, they were fine, although they did take a little while to get up to temperature.
Defrosting was usually handled by the time-honored towel over the grab handle on the passenger side method. There were accessory air deflectors that moved more of what circulated air there was to the center of the windshield and you could get little electric fans that would blow on the windshield in Winter or on you in the Summer.
The elegant (more expensive) solution to the heating problem was to buy a gasoline powered heater such as were sold by JC Whitney and others. Those puppies were blow torches and could make all the difference in the world for passenger comfort.
Once you got past the heating/defrosting downsides VW's were awesome in Winter. They'd go anywhere most 4WD vehicles could go. Rear engine - rear wheel drive makes a lot of sense.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I remember an article that said carbon nano particles killed animals in under 4 hours.
Any safety study on long term impact of nanobatteries?
DDT seemed like such a great idea too,
at one time...
Let's face it. Our computing devices are going faster year after year. But our laptop batteries don't show the same performance improvement.
It's not the speed of the computing devices that cause problems with battery life - it's the size of the screen, the DVD player, and the hard drive that suck down the battery life. And if you look closely at the ratio of amp-hours to battery life, you'll notice that battery life has remained the same over the past ten years. This is probably because two to three hours of battery life is what we see as "acceptable" and as such every time we make better batteries, we see it as an opportunity to tack on a bigger LCD or a faster hard drive, not as an opportunity to make the batteries last longer.
There are plenty of smaller, more efficient laptops that last for four or five hours (at least), but my guess is that's not what you're looking for.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
There is a feul cell in development that takes glucose from the bloodstream, converts it to electricity and urea. It is supposed to be used for things such as pacemakers. If you eat 4000 calories per day and hook one of these up to your laptop, you can provide a constant 90 watts and still lose weight!
Soon, the stereotypical nerd will be sickly skinny.
www.olin.edu
Worked for this guy.
END OF LINE.
I'm afraid you're mistaken. While there have been many components specially designed for low power mobile use, many companies are putting regular old Pentium 4s and even regular 3.5" hard drives into laptops, relying on the battery to get 2+ hour charge times. The mobile devices you're speaking of -- machines with processors like the X-scale, the Crusoe, or even the Pentium M -- do in fact get vastly better charge times than the classic 2 - 4 hour laptop. My old Toshiba Pocket PC got 8 hours easy unless you had the wireless on...and I've seen the slower of the Pentium Centrino laptops in a 12" screen push 6 hours.
My tirade ignored this fact because reducing the power used by components isn't having much of an effect either way -- because the goal hasn't been to create a processor that can run for a day on a 7200 mAh power cell, but to create as fast a chip as possible that will run within the usual period of 4-6 hours -- or to decrease the required size and capacity of the battery to meet that period, thus making the device more portable. My Powerbook G4 has a 3600 mAh battery that gets the same battery life as my old Pismo with a 4800 mAh battery...and it's half the size. You HAVE to trade off somewhere...and the reason you don't see a large performance increase is that manufacturers are engineering machines to be more efficient, but have the same overall battery life.
This was what Apple did with the iPod 3G -- they used a smaller battery with 30% lower overall capacity than the iPod 2G as a way to decrease the overall footprint of the internals while maintaining very modest battery life (some say lower, but certainly not 30% lower).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Um yeah, that's not even close to what happened. Thanks!
But Piquepaille will never call it a blog in his posts. Why do you think that is?
Piquepaille is quite crafty and makes sure that the first link and last link in the post go directly to his blog. If you didn't know, this is prime real estate in the way the mind processes information. It significantly increases the chances that someone will clickthrough to Piquepaille's blog without even reading the text
The curious who don't know who he is will click on the first link "Roland Piquepaille", which is fine because in the Slashdot tradition he gets a linked credit.
But the last link in the text block is designed only to drive traffic to Piquepaille's blog. That's another story.
Piquepaille's deceptive and purposefully innocuous use of the phrase "this overview" (and some of the other variations) calculatedly obfuscates that its his blog. Why not say "my blog" then? Because fewer people are likely to click on it, which means less traffic to his blog, which means fewer people are likely to see his advertisements and still fewer people will clickthrough.
In other words, less money for Piquepaille.
The last link is there only for commercial purposes. I say that if Piquepaille wants to advertise on Slashdot, then he should buy an ad from OSDN. If the editors insist on posting his blog entries they should at least kill the link or edit the text so it says "Piquepaille's blog" or something.
I don't trust these batteries, though. Nanotech has great potential, but it also has great potential environmental hazard. We're talking about tiny microscopic needles, small enough to manipulate individual molecules and cut right through cellular membranes. It's no surprise that CNTs are highly toxic. I would expect the same for silicon nanotubes.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I've worked on dozens of beetles, vans, and variants. I've owned three bugs, two Karmann Ghias, (and a volksy-type Porsche which I unfortunately totalled).
I've never, ever seen a VW with an electric heater. I've never even seen one mentioned in a manual or catalog.
The stock VW flat-4 air-cooled engine routes air up past the cylinders, down into ceramic-cored heat exchangers that collect heat directly from the exhaust, through the rocker panels below the doors, and up behind the dashboard into the defroster vents. The left side runs hotter because the air has to go by the oil cooler on that side, and the flapper valves regulating air passage from the heat exchangers are controlled by solid wires running from levers (in the beetle and ghia these are between the seats by the handbrake). There are typically four vents into the passenger compartment, two in the rear that always work, and two in the front that (along with the dfrost vents) direct cold air into the compartment once the rocker panels have rusted out from the combination of repeated heating/cooling cycles and the constant application of gravel, water, and road salt flung up onto them from the front tires.
The kubelwagens and vans had optional gasoline heaters which were quite excellent.
Now, my Prius has dozens of electric heating elements. But that's a whole 'nother subject.
It's so refreshing to hear something other than neo-con whinging and grizzling on /.
Is that a lot of electricity comes from non renewable sources coal, natural gas. So in reality you aren't saving the environment. Its much like adding ethanol to gas because its renewable but just think of how much natural resources was used up to make it from growing corn, to distilling it.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Lead acids are fairly tolerant of deep discharge, some more than others though.
The main thing with lead acid and discharge is you cannot leave the battery discharged. Discharging causes a coating to build up on the plates. If you charge it immediately or soon after, the coating dissolves again. If you leave it discharged the coating will bond and stick there. Then you have to replace the battery.
NiCds are on the way out, they are nearly illegal in Europe right now because of the cadmium. NiMHs replace them, and NiMHs work well, except they have higher internal resistance than NiCds and they have a higher self-discharge rate. This 2nd one is the real killer, put a NiMH away for a month and it will be dead, whether it was connected to anything or not.
Why do you assume a hybrid car has to run on regular gasoline? There's no reason not to have a hybrid diesel/electric, assuming you can build a small diesel engine that satisfies any other constraints (environmental cleanliness, etc.) that you have.
Such a car would have killer mileage -- the great mileage of a diesel on the highway, and all of the advantages of a hybrid in the city (quick stop/start, and recapturing energy through regenerative braking).
how do you know??
it's not easy to live up to all the clean air requirements of the 2004 car manufacturer.. and your 1954 truck doesn't have to....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
- gee, i use a $100 laptop running NetBSD and X with WiFi and get 10 hours on a dual-LiIon battery... of course the technology is very old, and the laptops (WinCE devices) are no longer made... - my Apple Powerbook gets 2+hours, but OS X is worth every minute... - perhaps PC notebook manufacturers and Intel don't have a clue, while older technology (and new technology from Apple) works?
It's the wave of the future.
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I wonder how airport security will like these batteries? If these become used enough will airlines have an option to give electrical outlets for computers/other gadgets?
Because I was there, obviously.
shut up j-dizzle :-)))