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Fuel Cells for Laptops Due Next Week
prostoalex writes "AVC and Antig Technology will demo a production-ready fuel cell for laptops next week on CeBIT trade show. According to PC Magazine, 'the CD-ROM size fuel cell will fit within the media bay of a notebook PC, replacing the drive with additional battery power.' The fuel cell battery will last 8 hours."
Like these (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2503291.stm)...
Seriously, heat generated by laptops, "tank" of methanol, and everything close to something 'precious' is a little un-nerving!
The article doesn't give much more information about the technology that was given in the summary. Hopefully we will see some specs for this promising tech soon!
Seriously, what would be the travel restrictions with these? Will airlines (or more precisely the TSA) allow me onboard with, say a dozen of these? Or even just one?
There's no mention/plan on how to refill the thing. Also, it weighs a lot - more than 3 lbs, which could almost double some laptops' overall weight. It may be "production-ready" in the sense it can be manufactured and used, but I don't think it's "production-ready" in the real worls sense at all.
Imagine how this will EXPLODE on the laptop market! Can you just imagine the FIRE in the eyes of who sees this? How about the PAIN existing latpop battery makers will face once this product FLUSHES through, like a HOTCAKE!!
HA! HA!.....uuugh....
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Yet another thing for fast-food reject personnel to get their oversized panties in a twist.
I thought the fuel cell technology was much more promising than 8 hours. That's still less than three times longer compared with my standard laptop battery. Or is the main point that it's refillable/reusable?
It'll last 8 minutes w/ my AMD64 laptop! This thing eats electrons like pacman eats yellow pills.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
From TFA:
Neither Antig nor AVC stated what the fuel-cell module would cost, nor offered any plan for consumers to refill them, however. Both companies are based in Taiwan, and company representatives were unavailable for comment.
What? I can't refill it? Whats the point then?
Nothing to see here... Please move along...
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Something tells me that the initial price of these fuel cells is going to exceed the price of the laptop itself. In fact, I'll bet it'll be cheaper for me to buy a car batter, an inverter, and a sherpa to carry them while he follows me everywhere. :)
If true, I'd buy it.
My last laptop (a Dell Inspiron 8000) I kept two batteries in (it was a three spindle notebook). This increased the weight, but gave me over three hours of battery life with normal use (it was a desktop replacement that just loved to eat batteries). I would gladly replace one in that notebook with one of these for the extra battery life (if I still had it).
My currently laptop is a Apple PowerBook (15", Feb 2005 model). I'm not sure it would have the room necessary for one of these to replace the standard battery, but I would gladly do it (I currently get 3 hours of use, or about 45 min if I run a full-on 3D game with the laptop in "high performance" mode).
I would be much more interested if it was a closed system that could recharge it's self (like a fuel-cell could be set up). That said, it's 45w of power and almost 4 pounds. My current battery is 46 watts and less than 1.8 pounds. And I know the newer PowerBooks and MacBook Pros have better batteries than mine.
3 more watts, double the weight. How will that give me 8 hours of battery life? I'm skeptical. Maybe in an ultra-light notebook with a slow processor doing word processing.
Still, at least someone is about to market something other than a "normal" battery.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
... the TSAs policy on these things. I can't see them allowing the average traveller to carry them on board. I guess I'll be checking my laptop from now on?
I think it would still be more convenient to simply plug the laptop into the wall, a car outlet, or even a solar array for a recharge. If you're in the absolute middle of nowhere, you could carry an extra battery or two and it probably wouldn't be much more volume/weight than a pack of methanol containers. On top of that, hotel rooms, conference rooms, coffee shops and other places I use my laptop don't have methanol dispensers, but almost all of them have plenty of free electricity.
Besides, 8 hours is not that huge of an improvement over batteries. Fuel cells seem to have promise, but I won't be switching until I can run a laptop for days at a time.
is where you're getting "full-on 3D Games" for your Powerbook. Seriously. I'm looking at my AL15" on the corner of the desk, and just trying to imagine....
Please show me something the size of a CD ROM that can power a notebook... I'll buy 10.
I assume that what they meant to write was 'CD ROM _Drive_ Sized'
Whenever a new technology is promised by a certain time, they're never right.
If history is any guide, it'll take at least _two_ weeks.
Not much information was given.. Would there be any kind of exhaust? What about the people in the green jackets, is this environmentally friendly?
That's no good! Current laptop batteries last at least a month and a half before they fail!
A better option would be to make a power "brick" with a DC output and a number of tips for popular notebooks, much as currently done for universal power supplies. You could then make a single device that works with a lot more notebooks, and have more power available as it's not constrained to fit into a particular form factor.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Excuse me could you please remove the potental bomb from your laptop before you board the plane.
8 hours? that can be achieved with li-polymer, without the need to gas up your laptop.
especially since by the time this crap comes out, intel will have it's ultra low power core chips out (45 nm) for laptops that are supposed to get 8 hours or more battery life (late 06)
45 watts is a rather useless metric for duration. It's like saying my car gets 25 miles to the gallon without giving any tank capacity, and expecting you to compute its range from that. Watt-hours, or more properly, joules produced from a full fuel cell would be much more useful.
Hamster wheel.
The mark of a mature person is not creating arbitrary criteria for considering others mature.
The methanol-powered Antig fuel cell provides 45 watts of power on a single "tank" of methanol, and weighs 3.7 pounds (1.7 kg).
The expense of hiring a bodybuilder to carry your laptop for you seems rather high.
Not next decade, not next year, but next week! Never is a new technology coming out next week. It's either coming out in the not-too-distant future, or it's already here. I'm scared at this change...
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Wee lets all look at the link on yahoo news. How come on one thought of going to the manufacturer's website?
http://www.antig.com/english/mediabay.html
It used cartridges. There you go your refill.
10,000 hamsters on a large running wheel.
I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but...
HP made two versions of their HP zv5000 and Compaq R3000 notebooks two years ago, an Intel P4 version and an AMD Athlon 64 version. With a 12 cell battery, the AMD version gets 3-4 hours of battery life in average use. I was able to play just over 3 HOURS of DVD video on mine.
The P4 version gets about an hour. HP wisely decided to drop Intel CPUs from the following year's zv6000/R4000 lines.
So, substitute "Prescott-core P4" for "AMD64" in the parent post to make it a lot more accurate.
The methanol-powered Antig fuel cell provides 45 watts of power on a single "tank" of methanol, and weighs 3.7 pounds
Isn't that heavier then my laptop?
~= scwizard =~
Imagine gas stations to fill up your car and your laptop.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Why are these powered with methanol rather than ethanol?
I'd think a booze-powered computer would be every geek's dream.
(Cue Futurama jokes here... )
In fact, I'd pay lots more for a computer that I could keep going by giving it a shot of Everclear every so often.
Warning: The intelligence of this post may be larger than it appears.
To everybody wondering about refilling the MeOH solution that these cells use - it probably won't be practical. The 'fuel' needs to be very pure, otherwise catalyst poisoning will destroy your very expensive fuel cell. I imagine swappable methanol cartridges just like AA batteries might be available - one day.
No one will buy it, hell a Li battery lasts that long, I thought these things were supposed to last like 20 hours or more. All the promises, broken ;)
What do they imagine you might be carrying that can't be used as a weapon?
That's why I hear that Chuck Norris is on the "Do Not Fly" list, not that any airport screener has yet to have the balls to inform him of this. Because we all know, if you have the balls to inform Charles of bad news, you are about to not have any balls at all.
..does it make the same sound as when Pacman dies?
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Oh, wait...
I've been testing Windows Vista for a few months, and have been scratching my head concerning how they were going to power their Laptops. Vista is one resource hungry O.S. Asbestos aprons, shoulder pack nuclear reactors, and Thighmasters with integated generators came to mind. These power cells might turn out to be an essential Next-Gen component.
If these cells are not refillable, then they are useless for extended uses, such as the enormous power outages during the hurricanes last year. With a simple cheap windup or pump kinetic generator, then the fuel for this can be anything I like, such as muffalettas, marinated olives, or Jolt Cola.
I have always maintained that those people condemed to carry a laptop around must have beheaved very badly in a previous life ( think Pol Pot, or, day time TV soap producer).
So heres another 1.7 kilos to lug around, which seems somewhat unfair, would it be possable to restrict this improvemnet to members of the legal profession, indeed, it should be made a compulsary accessory for patent lawers.
On a more serious note, why mess around with the CD bay format. Every poratable I have ever owned has a little 12v power socket in the rear.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Laptop Methanol Fuel Cells Promised This Week
As many many others have said, I'll believe it when it's in the shops.
I've been posting on the net since 1994 and I still haven't come up with a good sig!
These things will probably let out more heat, and my balls have had all they can take + a little more.
'the CD-ROM size fuel cell will replace the drive' ...crippling the laptop...
He most likely had the CGA version for the PC.
This was on a self booting CD and when loaded it choose the color scheme for Yellow Red and Green.
In the CGA (In medium Resolution 320x200) days you had the ability for 16 colors for the background to replace black, Even colors outside the display margin. Then CGA Defaultly uses White Magenta, and Cyan. But they can be switched to Yellow, Light Red, and Light Green or to Brown, Red, and Green. Neither color schemes were ever good for anything but they were color so we were happy. So for the CGA Packman to Keep the Signature Charactor Yellow the dots had to be yellow too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They have more room there on my HP notebook anyway... and it is replacing the function of my battery, and I can keep my CD-DVD burner-reader for use.
there's NO such beast as Watt Hours... the capacity of a battery is measured in Amp-Hours... the number of Amps it can supply for one hour or the number of hours it can output one Amp...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
But the real question is who will be the first one to play Fallout on a fuel-cell powered laptop?
That seems like a ridiculously short time based on the needs of current notebook computers, and the capacity of fuel cells. They can convert ~70% of the fuel energy into electricity. And the hydrocarbons used as fuel are VERY energy dense!
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
that it really is free before you plug in, especially if you're in Germany!
This seems about as useful as Compaq's promise of a keyboard that would use its kinetic energy (from typing) to charge the battery in the system. Whatever happened to that? And at least the kinetic keyboard wasn't carrying highly explosive fuels...
Electromagnetic radiation which drops off exponentially is usually not a problem as you never hold a desktop or a microwave in your lap. However, with laptop only God knows what that does to your "precious." And in the light of recent demo on how to boil an egg with two cellphones (see: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/06/156236 &from=rss), it seems that heat is only a small part of the overall equation.
I'd love to extend the battery life of my laptop but not if it is like the fuel cell in Terminator 3: http://mag.awn.com/issue8.04/8.04images/T301_T3_fu elCell_explosion.jpg
YES4Adults discussion forums!
What the hell would you use to recharce these things...Everclear?!?
/me stands at podium
"Hi. My name is *hic* Joe...and I'm a *hic* hacker *hic*."
1 is the square root of all evil.
Drop...and Roll when the thing catches fire! Refilling the thing will be like topping up a fondue pot...don't do it around an open flame
You are confusing energy with power. Using SI units, the latter is in watts and indicates how much juice your battery can put out per second, the former is in joules and indicates how much juice your battery can put period. To get the total battery life, you must divide energy by power, which will yield seconds using joules & watts.
Did anyone else notice the actual article's typo? The line "Fuel cells to power notebook PCs have been on the drawig boards for some time;" has the word drawing spelled as drawig. Geez.
What is it with all of the Chuck Norris jokes lately? I've seen them all over the Internet in more and more frequency recently.
What is up with it?
Libertas in infinitum
I still don't get the joke.... I've been accused of being dense before.
Perhaps this is like a virual marketing campaign for him and his workout stuff that he sells?
After all, I can't believe he is THIS popular?
Libertas in infinitum