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BBC Tests Pre-Commercial Toshiba Fuel Cell Laptop
nbannerman writes "Fuel cells have been talked about a lot recently, but Toshiba have finally demonstrated a working model. The BBC News website provides some interesting background on fuel cells, but does carrying a warning for the future; 'Toshiba's phase one fuel cell shows how near, but also how far, the version is from being a commercial reality.'"
Bullshit. So much bullshit, in fact, I don't even know what your point is. I have a last-generation iBook 12". It has a rather friendly battery life of about 4h30 under "normal use", which means screen brightness set to a bit over half, airport on, and working with Vim, while Safari and Mail are open in the background (actually, lots more stuff open in the background, but those are the only two applications that MIGHT consume CPU resources and hence drain battery life a bit more -- namely I rarely use iTunes while using my laptop on battery power, I'd rather use my iPod). Those six hours they purportedly last is what Apple announces, and you KNOW that's under "better than optimal" conditions.
If I use the iBook as a glorified iPod (just iTunes playing while I study, the screen going out because there's no input), it'll rise to about 5h30. Yes, that battery is working fully, with a full charge holding slightly more than nominal capacity (4411 mAh rather than 4400 mAh, according to coconut battery)
No, the iBook CAN'T go months on end without being charged, unless you turn it off. Even then, that's bad practice that'll damage the battery eventually. I find the iBook consumes around 1% battery capacity per day, as they DO NOT suspend to disk. They just power down unused components, and kind of suspend to RAM. Kind of being the keyword here -- disc defrag happens while they're suspended, if you leave them connected via ethernet to a router and have an SSH connection to somewhere they reportedly keep the connection alive (reportedly -- I've never tried it myself), etc. Newer PowerBooks (and, I assume, the MacBooks), will copy the contents of their RAM to HDD to protect them from battery failures, however.
All in all, you're misrepresenting the Macs, and I have to wonder why. They're quality hardware. Quality hardware doesn't need positive misrepresenting, as its value speaks for itself. Building false expectations can only lead to disappointment.