Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the coming-soon-to-your-lap dept.
funkman writes "Here is an article on CNN about the new Electrofuel PowerPad battery from IBM. It can runs an IBM ThinkPad 560 Pentium MMX-233 notebook for 15 hours. But the battery is not for sale yet. Finally, no more carrying multiple batteries. "
73 comments
Oh Look!
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Anonymous Coward
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I just created a long lasting battery by making it bigger! How smart! A 2.2 lb. battery???
Oh, so you've already designed a working prototype? Let us know when it's available.
-- Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Electrofuel, not IBM makes this.
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Anonymous Coward
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The battery is made by Electrofuel, not IBM. They're gonna have models for many different laptops soon. G
Doesn't sound revolutionary to me
by
Anonymous Coward
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it lasts 5x as long, but weighs over 3x as much. Significant improvement, but not drastic. And the article sounds like it's made by a company called Electrofuel, unrelated to IBM. They just tested it on an IBM.
Re:Batteries...
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Anonymous Coward
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As far as I know the PowerBooks really have all the battery time apple is claiming, and nit just in sleep mode... Ok... now the nice thing would be to put one of these batteries on a PowerBook G3 o an iBook... eh eh 48 hours of autonomy?
Bah
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Anonymous Coward
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They should make a 1lb bat that lasts 6 hours, rather then a 2.whatever lb one that lasts 15. With my laptopo tastes, I'm pretty anal about thickness and heavyness.
Re:Bah
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Anonymous Coward
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Even a 1lb bat would be too thick and heavy for my anal passages. Exit only please.
Re:No, the battery lifetime will be the same
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Anonymous Coward
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Well, my Thinkpad 600 has a 13" screen which makes X a pleasure, I can add a DVD, although I normally just keep the LSL drive in its place, and it has 288MB RAM. I will be upgrading the 6GB drive to the 18GB drive in a month or so. I normally carry three batteries, and I will probably keep doing so, but it will be nice to get more than 2.5 hours from it -- the RAM eats power, not the 266. I used to think that people with laptops had an expensive toy, until I got one. I use it all the time and my productivity on the road is far higher. I have no complaints, other that the fact that I don't really trust the LSL backups and I can't really get a fast enough wire most places to ssh in and back up remotely. But that will come. I would like a slightly faster processor, but I don't need it and would be happier with a disk with more cache (which I am getting), a larger or on-chip L2 (I expect that I will be going with a Celeron or a K6-3 portable next time so that will be covered) and faster system speeds, i.e., PC-133 ECC RAM and a 133MHz bus. And I run Linux on it, and it definitely runs faster than a 486, expecially with Applix open, with DB2 going, with VMWare keeping an NT session up, and so on!
Re:What about the water?
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Anonymous Coward
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In one experimental design, excess water from the fuel cells is sent through a cooling jacket around the Athlon processor (no fan!), and the outflow then routed through garbage collected Java Beans into an attached coffee cup.
Re:Batteries...
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Anonymous Coward
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Well, considering that ThinkPads are made by IBM I don't think Apple-time even comes into play here. Why didn't they just create a battery that had the same form factor of the current batteries used in the ThinkPad? It just seems like a clunky solution, especially when they are claiming the battery can be made very thin.
Re:TiMe WaRp
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Anonymous Coward
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Didn't the guy say "at the time"?
Re:Laptop Explosive Devices?
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Anonymous Coward
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It's already happened. NEC once recalled their laptops (a long time ago) when they tried a new type of battery (probably lithium ion, it was new then). They tended to explode and set on fire... During usage or not. Mind you, this was 2 or 3 years ago... I hope I kept the article!:-)
Now you don't need to pack explosives if you're a terrorist on an airplane. Just pack a paperclip and a laptop with a big battery!
This won't change a thing
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Anonymous Coward
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As far as I see it... people will still carry around 2 batteries just because they're too lazy to recharge regularly... just my $.02 Beware TPB
Power Generating Keyboards
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Anonymous Coward
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What about the IBM patent for energy generating keyboards? That seemed like a real way to go. Each keypress puts a tiny amount of juice back, extending the battery life. Finally, a real reason to comment your code:-)
Re:Power Generating Keyboards
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nathana
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I believe that it was Compaq who invented the battery-charging keyboard. They have small magnets under the keys or something. I'd have to go dig up the references that I saw to that keyboard to be sure that it wasn't IBM, though...
Re:(Offtopic) Re:Methanol
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Anonymous Coward
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Either he doesn't know what he's talking about or there must be a lot of blind and brain damaged Chinamen over there.
Re:Methanol is not controlled.
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Anonymous Coward
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Denatured alcohol can contain any of a number of denaturants to render the ethanol unsuitable for human consumption: methanol is most common, other agents include benzene, toluene, xylene, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone...basically any old kind of paint thinner will do.
Re:Methanol is not controlled.
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Anonymous Coward
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Aspartame-->MeOH is why anyone who regularly consumes this artificial sweetener is an absolute moron and deserves all the neurological-related health problems they will certainly get when they grow old. This stuff can be a serious cumulative-effect poison.
Re:Laptop Explosive Devices?
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Anonymous Coward
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I'm no Ph.D in anything, but wouldn't a 15hour laptop battery have the energy density of a good sized explosive device?
The answer is that the energy density is very low, but it's still a fire hazard.
The propensity to explode isn't determined by energy density -- if it was, Twinkies would be a deadly explosive, because the energy released from burning a Hostess snack cake is comparable to the energy from the same weight of gasoline or TNT. In comparison, batteries have pathetically low energy densities (this is why electric cars have been unable to displace internal combustion engines despite the gas-burners' poor efficiency).
As the TNT-Twinkie comparison might suggest, it's the peak rate at which energy is released that determines whether or not it's a hazard. So a decomposing Twinkie releases its energy very slowly, it's not an explosive hazard. But a battery, even though it has a much lower energy density, can be a fire hazard because it can put out a much greater power output.
Good engineering can greatly reduce this danger, kind of the opposite of dipping a Twinkie into liquid oxygen and turning it into a deadly explosive.
Need the power up here...
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Anonymous Coward
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Yea, I read the packaging points now: Also doubles as a backup booster for your car for those cold Canadian winters.
Re:The problem isn't power, it's power architectur
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Anonymous Coward
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Also, no hard drive (a major power suck) - and the Newton was a black and white display, no?
Still, moving to a StrongARM processor in notebooks would greatly improve their battery life. Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't have a laptop OS for the StrongARM processor. But there's this little OS called Linux...;-)
Re:IBM I WILL KISS YOUR FEET
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Anonymous Coward
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Well, yes, IBM is coming out with a lot of amazing things lately, but this is not of them them. This battery was developed by a Canadian company called Electrofuel. It just happened to be tested on a ThinkPad.
The company is called Electrofuel, they're a Canadian company with as far as I know, they have no financial connection to IBM. IBM is merely one of the laptop brands they support. Check out their site, lots of good info.
Has anyone else noticed that about 85% of the amazing new things coming out of the industry are from IBM. I don't know where they recruit for R&D, but it must be good.
If all the things IBM has been talking about inventing come out within the next ten years computers are going to kick about 100x more ass than they do today.
Too bad Microsoft can't use all it's money to actually make good stuff instead of the loads of shit it pours out. MS probably spends half their R&D money making MSN Messenger work w/ AIM. There's innovation for ya Justive Dept.
No, the battery lifetime will be the same
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Jerky+McNaughty
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Sure, the batteries hold more juice, but now everyone will just produce laptops with even more ridiculous hardware than ever before. 15" screens, DVD drives, 256 MB of RAM,... Call me cynical, but it's just like bloated software: We have 500 MHz machines which run about the same speed with today's software as my 486 ran years ago with that software---and I still accomplish the same tasks. Heh.
Re:No, the battery lifetime will be the same
by
47Ronin
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Are you kidding? Those laptops are here! The Apple Powerbook G3/400 has a full-power (read as "same as desktop," unlike the castrated Mobile PIIs and AMDs) 400MHz G3 CPU with 1MB backside L2 cache running at up to 200MHz. The 14.1" Active Matrix TFT screen is driven by an 8MB ATI LT Rage Pro chipset which can drive an additional monitor for dual virtual displays. It includes a DVD drive, SCSI-2 jack, 10/100Base-T Ethernet, SVGA / S-Video Out, stereo speakers, a PCMCIA slot, 10GB HD, and two USB ports. Apple's Lithium Ion batteries carry a potential charge of up to five hours since the G3 only eats about five watts. Manufacturers of Wintel laptops probably can't take advantage of new battery technology because it's reached a point where they can't make faster systems without bolting on portable fire extinguishers or industrial strength fans. Poor Wintel.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Although this is good news, I don't know if it really warrents the term "breakthrough".
Do the math. The standard battery got 3:04, or 184 minutes. The new battery got 15:01, or 901 minutes. What really matters though, is not the difference in run time, but the difference in run time per unit mass. The standard battery was only 0.6625 lbs, so a battery made from hooking 2.2 lbs worth of standard batteries together should be expected to run for 184*2.2/0.6625 = 611 minutes, or 10:11, compared to 15:01. So this is a 47% improvement.
Not bad, but I don't know how they can justify the statement that they have "more than twice the energy density" just by looking at these numbers.
Of course, these devices need to prove themselves on many other fronts before they become practical. Cost, long term reliability, charging times, and malfunction possibilities all need to be considered before endorsing a technology such as this.
Re:Laptop Explosive Devices?
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nathana
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I don't remember about NEC (doesn't mean it didn't happen:-)), but I do remember that Apple recalled one of their lines of PowerBooks because the new batteries they were using (yes, they were Lithium-Ion) were catching on fire. They replaced that PowerBook with a similarly-equipped model that used NiMH instead until they could get all of the bugs worked-out.
Dang! With a name like "Electrofuel" I figured that this had to be a fuel cell system. A former employer of mine was contemplating the use of a fuel cell design to power cellphones, so I'm sure it wouldn't be a stretch to power a laptop with them. Insurance and liability issues are probably the hold-up, though. Even if internal-battery model fuel cells are made only for laptop models with no battery cover (leaving an open, unencumbered exhaust vent), some fool out there would manage to block the vent, shove something in it, or otherwise blow the damn thing up in his or her lap, then file a I-dumped-McDonalds-coffee-in-my-lap lawsuit.
Oh, and I guess the market would be somewhat crimped if you were not permitted to carry the compressed gas cartridges required for a fuel cell aboard an airplane. Double-dang.
-- I think not...(*poof*)
Re:when do I get my fuel cell?
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Jack_Frost
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Not all types of fuel cells run hot enough to cause the damage that you describe. Large scale solid oxide fuel cells for industrial purposes do make a great deal of heat by design to increase their efficiency. Proton exchange cells do not require such high operating temperatures. Also the fuel for the fuel cell need not be in a compressed gas cylinder. Any number of liquid hydrocarbon or alcohol fuels can be used.
I'll wait for the fuel cells to come out.
by
Svartalf
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They're due out shortly and they are powered by Ethanol- imagine something that weighs about 1lb and runs for that 15 hours or more...
-- I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Re:I'll wait for the fuel cells to come out.
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Jeffrey+Baker
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What were you planning to do with all the water that the fuel cell produces? -jwb
Re:I'll wait for the fuel cells to come out.
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Jeffrey+Baker
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What were you planning to do with all the water that the fule cell produces? -jwb
Re:Laptop Explosive Devices?
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morbid
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" I'd rather not risk having an explosive charge sitting next to my joy department. "
Lucky you getting joy from your department. I'm an evolutionary dead-end and would like to donate mine to medical science, or someone who needs a new one.
-- I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
What a bunch of naysayers!
by
gelfling
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Ok so it doesn't run for 3 million years off gravity waves. It doesn't power your house and it doesn't weigh less than the electrons in this note. BFD! I easily carry 2.2lbs of batteries around to get about 3hrs on my 765D. If I could throw this in, hop on a plane do a customer meeting, fly back all on one charge w/o having to carry the AC power supply w/o having to tackle people for the one outlet in the room or wander around looking for a powerstrip that is in fact, GOOD.
Now, how many more addons will laptop manufacturers come out with.... that will knock the time right back down to three hours. Owell....
-- So there.
Energy density versus discharge rate
by
coreman
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I went over to their website and poked around quite a bit and nowhere do they state the maximum discharge rate or the charging time. One of the nice things around NiCads is that they take a high charge rate and discharge rapidly. R/C Cars for example can pull 30amps out of a 9.6v pack since this type of drain will typically drain a 1700mah pack in 3-5 minutes, does that mean we could drain the 11000mah 160 in under 1/2 an hour in a typical application? Likewise, if recharge rates are high, it's better for regenerative braking and overnight charging for electric vehicles (where they only quote densities, not discharge rates as a goal)
I'm no Ph.D in anything, but wouldn't a 15hour laptop battery have the energy density of a good sized explosive device? How long until we hear of a laptop exploding? I know there are warnings on some batteries telling of the risks of overcharging today. I can't imagine the risks that a 15hr battery would bring along with it. My two hour life laptop battery is rated 7.5 amp/hours, for a 15hour, that would be 50+ amp/hours?
Honestly, I'd rather have a backpack'able battery. I carry my laptop in a carrier in a backpack already, there's room for a car-battery..
Would be nice to have. But I'd rather not risk having an explosive charge sitting next to my joy department.
-rd
Re:Laptop Explosive Devices?
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King+Babar
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Good engineering can greatly reduce this danger, kind of the opposite of dipping a Twinkie into liquid oxygen and turning it into a deadly explosive.
But can't better engineering greatly enhance this danger by finding a way to say, aerosolize the Twinkie and turn it into a Food Air Explosive (FAE)? Or at least something you could put in a grenade launcher?
No?
Rats. Technology is so limited sometimes...
King Babar
--
Babar
Re:Laptop Explosive Devices?
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SyscoKid
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Not necercerly so. It's all depends on what the battery is made of and how much current the device is pulling. There are alot of variables that could be thrown in. I haven't seen anyone really try to push silver in electrical components. Silver has a extreamly low resistance and would be pefect for alot of uses. Some car batteries have silver in them, but not that many.
Well I never tried running it dry, but my battery meter has never read more than 3:30, even after charging for days&days. one of the new powerbooks, mind you.
While I love the new pbs, the price of the system you listed is a bit high. For my money ($2249 educational) I got a 333 mhz, 4gb, 64 mb. I added an extra 128 mb for $99. DVD's just not worth the extra money, afaic, and if I change my mind I can just get the vst drive later.
Sounds like my PowerBook 100 battery
by
gsfprez
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so, how is this thing different than the external, heavy battery pack i bought from VST for my Powerbook 100 8 years ago? my guess is that it isn't.
-- guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Re:Fuel for the fuel cells
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Jack_Frost
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Fuel Cells can in fact run on many different hydrocarbon based fuels, from gasoline to pure alcohol (of any variety). The mechanism is the same in any case. The fuel acts as a Hydrogen donator, and the free hydrogens then drive the fuel cells along with oxygen from the air. The technology centers around diffusion of ions through a semipermeable insulating membrane, usually ceramic or plastic. Hydrogen gas is one one side of the membrane and oxygen gas (plain old air really but the oxygen does the work) is on the other. The hydrogens are stripped of their electron on one side of the membrane. The electrons flow to the other side of the cell (think negative to positive in battery terms) through an external circuit (be it laptop, cell phone, pager, etc) and the hydrogen diffuses through the membrane to form water with the freely available oxygen, this closes the circuit and satisfies thermodynamics, making the whole thing work.
Ideally hydrogen and oxygen would be the only two fuel components needed, but we of course do not live in an ideal world. Using pure oxygen does not offer enough of performance benefit to offset the tremendous costs of air liquefaction to obtain pure oxygen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and it surrounds us in the form of water, but this hydrogen has been sequestered by oxygen. Obtaining pure hydrogen from water using electrolosis uses a great deal of energy, making it very expensive. NASA pays about $1.05 per pound of hydrogen, versus about $0.13 per pound for gasoline at my local Exxon. For this reason most commercial fuel cells use a reformer to process any number of hydrocarbon or alcohol based fuels into usable hydrogen. Hence methanol, ethanol, methane, etc. The reformation process decreases the efficeincy of the cell somewhat, but they are still much more efficient then chemical batteries.
Fuel cells are well over 100 years old, but until recently the manufacturing technology did not exist to make them really useful. It's basically a plumbing problem. To maximize power output per volume you need to create a large surface area for diffusion. This is usually accomplished by making numerous folds in the exchange membrane. However this makes it more difficult to pipe in hyrdogen and oxygen to where they are needed. The chemistry of the devices is well understood, and it's largely a manufacturing problem now.
The July '99 issue of Scientific American had a special section devoted to fuel cells, and features articles discussing the use of cells in portable items such as phones as well as residential and commerical scale cells for homes and offices.
Re:Nice, but it's no revolution...
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starman97
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One other note... "Electrofuel's super-polymer technology dedicates virtually all the space to the battery itself and dispenses with the usual metal package for supporting the battery cells, which can be as thin as 1 millimeter"
Scary.. A lithium cell with a 1 mm thick plastic case.. I wonder what would happen if you punctured the case with say, a pen point and shorted out the cell which was then exposed to Oxygen.. Bad things(tm) happen when Lithium metal burns..
-- Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Nice, but it's no revolution...
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starman97
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My high school math teacher told us that in China it is common to drink "wood alcohol" (methanol), and, presumably because they're used to it, no ill effects result. But when he was there he had a swig or two and had to lie down for a few days.
This product sounds good but it's not as though there haven't been external battery upgrades for portables before (such as the offerings from AER).
The tragedy here is that vendors (and presumably their customers) are so uninterested is creating a machine that's really efficient in terms of power consumption. In fact with the latest advances from the FreePlay people (who make the wind-up radios) and real attention to power consumption, it ought to be possible to make a wind-up portable that works just fine. Yet people designing portables just don't seem to get it, and we haven't come very far, power-consumption-wise, since the Omnibook 300 or the eMate 300.
And why can't vendors produce a reflective TFT display that lets users work without power-draining backlighting when possible? I think Nintendo could produce a better portable than today's gang of me-too engineers.
Okay, I wasn't being serious, but if you insist...
First: I'd think that since a fuel cell ideally consumes hydrogen and oxygen (NASA versions), that the more pure (close to / highest percentage of hydrogen) the fuel the better the performance you'll receive.
Second: (In my best 'Bones McCoy' voice) I'm a techie, not a chemist, damnit! How do you expect me to know the difference between types of alcohol?!? Besides the obvious Jack Daniels vs Skyy vs Captain Morgan vs Everclear (foom!) =P
Third: Now that I'm done ranting, I have to admit I'm glad there are people out there who actually bothered to stay awake in HS chemistry class. Who else would check facts for those of us who don't know any better?
Besides, I don't even know if I correctly remembered which type of fuel they were using for that fuel cell! It could have been ethanol and I just don't remember. Alternatively, why not use butane? It's readily available, inexpensive, and provides it's own pressure feed! Just 'stick a bic' into your phone, and you're good for another week! Also, it avoids the alcohol questions altogether!
--
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Yeah, I know it's a 'Me, too!' post...
by
Raetsel
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Ditto on those fuel cells. I was quite happy to hear about the ~80 deg F units that were demonstrated as a proof of concept device -- what? about a year ago?
IIRC, the researchers developing it were trying to run your cell phone all month on an insert pack of methanol... or was it a week...
The important point was, for the volume the fuel cell occupied, the energy density wasn't that great, but it was enough to run a phone (about 1 watt or so). Being that heat is more of an enemy in a laptop than a phone, I'd worry about the necessity of additional cooling measures. (Can't just replace the battery in your existing laptop) The recharge times are incredible, though!
One question: If these things run on methanol (alcohol), will you have to be over 21 to purchase fuel for your laptop?;-P
(Yes, I've thought of denatured alcohol! Sheesh!)
--
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Plus, you have to wonder what all PC World (or whoever tested it) was doing with the laptop while it was running of the glorious "little" battery.. i.e., running CD, DVD, etc. versus just playing FreeCell or xboing.
This new battery technology is currently in development for Apple's PowerBooks too. Currently it can be easily plugged into the PB's AC adapter jack. Future revisions will be solid full size batteries that go into the hot-swappable bays. Since the G3 draws so little electricity (five watts as opposed to the power-gluttonous Pentiums), battery time will be enormous on an Apple laptop.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Did I forget to mention that Apple lists the PowerBook G3 to max out at 384 MB RAM? Theoretically that means you can max it out yourself to about 512 MB RAM unless I'm mistaken. I'm not sure if there are low-profile 256 MB SO-DIMMs.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
One question: If these things run on methanol (alcohol), will you have to be over 21 to purchase fuel for your laptop?;-P
No. Booze alcohol is ethanol. Methonol is deadly poison - and what they contaminate ethanol with to "denature" it.
Your enzyme systems, which turn ethanol into acetaldehyde and acetic acid (vinegar), which are only mildly annoying, also turn methanol into formaldehyde and formic acid (ant toxin), which are deadly - especially to nerves. Ingest a little methanol and go blind. Even the fumes will give you a headache. I'd be a lot happier if they fueled them with ethanol - or even isopropanol (rubbing alcohol).
On the other hand, they might run about as well on ethanol as on methanol, unmodified. We'll have to see the details of the devices once they're out.
-- Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Re:Methanol is not controlled.
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Tau+Zero
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Aspartame-->MeOH is why anyone who regularly consumes this artificial sweetener is an absolute moron and deserves all the neurological-related health problems they will certainly get when they grow old.
Obviously you haven't bothered reading the source. A quote:
Aspartame is composed of two amino acids, aspartic acid and the methyl ester of phenylalanine. Aspartame is completely and quickly metabolized to its two amino acids (aspartic acid and phenylalanine) and methanol through normal pathways. Amino acids are building blocks of protein. The body treats aspartame the same way it handles other foods, such as bananas, milk and hamburgers. The methanol is identical to that which we consume in much larger concentrations in fruits, vegetables and their juices, for instance. It is part of the normal diet.
The amount of methanol produced is approximately 10% by weight. The body then converts methanol to formaldehyde and then to a metabolite called formate. Formate is then quickly eliminated by the body in the form of carbon dioxide and water. Some critics point out that methanol, an alcohol, is toxic. However, the amounts produced in metabolism are small, and are no greater than the methanol produced by the metabolism of many fruits and vegetables. For comparison's sake, the amount of methanol resulting from drinking a 12-ounce can of soda sweetened with aspartame is less than obtained from drinking an 8-ounce glass of grape juice.
I assume that this means you've already given up grape juice, since you are so well-informed on this matter. (Basically, anyone who believes unconfirmed bullshit posted by Anonymous Cowards deserves what they get.)
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Re:Methanol is not controlled.
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Negadecimal
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I believe that they use benzene to contaminate ethanol. It's not too nice either -- kills the immune system.
On the subject of methanol poisoning (you're right about oxidation to formaldehyde and formic acid), aspartame (NutraSweet) disassociates under acidic conditions (i.e. stomach) to yield a couple of amino acids and methanol, in a one-to-one ratio. Yea!
Sounds good, but will it power my wearable
by
toast0
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It would be nice if they'd make a version that was specifically designed to be used as a source of 12V or 16V or some other voltage, and marketed as such, not as an add-on to such and such a laptop.
As a side effect they could just make that one, and let other ppl make it work w/ whatever laptop they want. (and i'd have another choice when i get everything else in my wearable ready to be powered)
Anyone else notice that the article never said anything about recharging life? Maybe it's not an issue but usually those nice, dense batteries have a 'better' memory and are more difficult to recharge repeatedly.
This just gives everyone an ecuse to build labtops that are more power hungry...large screens, huge displays, super surround sound with extra bass, huge processors...the list goes on...
Sad really...my old 386 with the software available at the time probably runs faster then my current computer with current software.
--
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Heh. How's the power drain of a typical PII-based notebook or laptop compared w/ the test machine?
I really don't see that much of a need for 15h of time (esp. if spares can be manufactured at a not extreme cost), but if it means that a more powerful CPU can be run for a longer (and still meaningful) time, that's spiffy.
Yes, I'd like to see your 386 play games like Half Life...
Saw a similar (SAME?) product at COMDEX/Toronto
by
Jonavin
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I was at COMDEX/Toronto in July and saw the similar/same product there. From the pic on ElectroFuel's website it looks like the same product but since I don't remember the name of the company that was at COMDEX, I'm not sure if it is the same company. They were demoing this battery with the 16hr runtime on a Toshiba(?? don't remember). It's pretty cool if you ask me.
Anyway, I picked it up and it felt like it was a lot less than 2lbs; maybe 1lb. Although, I did eat my Wheaties that morning...
15 Hours? I wonder if that is REAL time or Apple time.
--
- We dream of the stars. Now let us return to them.
The problem isn't power, it's power architecture
by
Mr.+Protocol
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· Score: 2
I got an object lesson in what's really going on here when I bought an Apple Newton 2100. Now, this final Newton sure won't replace a laptop for everyone, but it did for me: email, Web surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, the works, all in something the size of a smallish trade paperback, and powered from a standard-sized LiIon battery pack that can run the Newton for between 10 and 24 hours.
The Newton pulled this off by re-examining the architecture of a portable platform. If you make low power consumption a primary driver, instead of packing in the exact same family of peripherals that you use in a desktop platform which has (relatively) infinite power available, you get a machine which doesn't look a whole lot like today's laptops - but which also doesn't require 2.2 pounds of battery to run for 15 hours, either. The Newton 2100 has a 163 MHz processor, too, not one of those 12MHz wimpy things the other handhelds have. But this 163 MHz ARM RISC processor was designed from the ground up to use as little power as possible. The result is dramatic. It's fast when it needs to be, and the rest of the time it eats almost no power at all. Compare this to what an x86 or Pentium uses - even a "low-power" model.
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I just created a long lasting battery by making it bigger! How smart! A 2.2 lb. battery???
The battery is made by Electrofuel, not IBM. They're gonna have models for many different laptops soon. G
it lasts 5x as long, but weighs over 3x as much. Significant improvement, but not drastic. And the article sounds like it's made by a company called Electrofuel, unrelated to IBM. They just tested it on an IBM.
As far as I know the PowerBooks really have all the battery time apple is claiming, and nit just in sleep mode... Ok... now the nice thing would be to put one of these batteries on a PowerBook G3 o an iBook... eh eh 48 hours of autonomy?
They should make a 1lb bat that lasts 6 hours, rather then a 2.whatever lb one that lasts 15. With my laptopo tastes, I'm pretty anal about thickness and heavyness.
Well, my Thinkpad 600 has a 13" screen which makes X a pleasure, I can add a DVD, although I normally just keep the LSL drive in its place, and it has 288MB RAM. I will be upgrading the 6GB drive to the 18GB drive in a month or so. I normally carry three batteries, and I will probably keep doing so, but it will be nice to get more than 2.5 hours from it -- the RAM eats power, not the 266. I used to think that people with laptops had an expensive toy, until I got one. I use it all the time and my productivity on the road is far higher. I have no complaints, other that the fact that I don't really trust the LSL backups and I can't really get a fast enough wire most places to ssh in and back up remotely. But that will come. I would like a slightly faster processor, but I don't need it and would be happier with a disk with more cache (which I am getting), a larger or on-chip L2 (I expect that I will be going with a Celeron or a K6-3 portable next time so that will be covered) and faster system speeds, i.e., PC-133 ECC RAM and a 133MHz bus. And I run Linux on it, and it definitely runs faster than a 486, expecially with Applix open, with DB2 going, with VMWare keeping an NT session up, and so on!
In one experimental design, excess water from the fuel cells is sent through a cooling jacket around the Athlon processor (no fan!), and the outflow then routed through garbage collected Java Beans into an attached coffee cup.
Well, considering that ThinkPads are made by IBM I don't think Apple-time even comes into play here. Why didn't they just create a battery that had the same form factor of the current batteries used in the ThinkPad? It just seems like a clunky solution, especially when they are claiming the battery can be made very thin.
Didn't the guy say "at the time"?
It's already happened. NEC once recalled their laptops (a long time ago) when they tried a new type of battery (probably lithium ion, it was new then). They tended to explode and set on fire... During usage or not. Mind you, this was 2 or 3 years ago... I hope I kept the article! :-)
Now you don't need to pack explosives if you're a terrorist on an airplane. Just pack a paperclip and a laptop with a big battery!
As far as I see it... people will still carry around 2 batteries just because they're too lazy to recharge regularly... just my $.02
Beware TPB
What about the IBM patent for energy generating keyboards? That seemed like a real way to go. Each keypress puts a tiny amount of juice back, extending the battery life. Finally, a real reason to comment your code :-)
Either he doesn't know what he's talking about or there must be a lot of blind and brain damaged Chinamen over there.
Denatured alcohol can contain any of a number of denaturants to render the ethanol unsuitable for human consumption: methanol is most common, other agents include benzene, toluene, xylene, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone...basically any old kind of paint thinner will do.
Aspartame-->MeOH is why anyone who regularly consumes this artificial sweetener is an absolute moron and deserves all the neurological-related health problems they will certainly get when they grow old. This stuff can be a serious cumulative-effect poison.
I'm no Ph.D in anything, but wouldn't a 15hour laptop battery have the energy density of a good sized explosive device?
The answer is that the energy density is very low, but it's still a fire hazard.
The propensity to explode isn't determined by energy density -- if it was, Twinkies would be a deadly explosive, because the energy released from burning a Hostess snack cake is comparable to the energy from the same weight of gasoline or TNT. In comparison, batteries have pathetically low energy densities (this is why electric cars have been unable to displace internal combustion engines despite the gas-burners' poor efficiency).
As the TNT-Twinkie comparison might suggest, it's the peak rate at which energy is released that determines whether or not it's a hazard. So a decomposing Twinkie releases its energy very slowly, it's not an explosive hazard. But a battery, even though it has a much lower energy density, can be a fire hazard because it can put out a much greater power output.
Good engineering can greatly reduce this danger, kind of the opposite of dipping a Twinkie into liquid oxygen and turning it into a deadly explosive.
Yea, I read the packaging points now: Also doubles as a backup booster for your car for those cold Canadian winters.
Also, no hard drive (a major power suck) - and the Newton was a black and white display, no?
;-)
Still, moving to a StrongARM processor in notebooks would greatly improve their battery life. Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't have a laptop OS for the StrongARM processor. But there's this little OS called Linux...
Well, yes, IBM is coming out with a lot of amazing things lately, but this is not of them them. This battery was developed by a Canadian company called Electrofuel. It just happened to be tested on a ThinkPad.
The company is called Electrofuel, they're a Canadian company with as far as I know, they have no financial connection to IBM. IBM is merely one of the laptop brands they support. Check out their site, lots of good info.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Has anyone else noticed that about 85% of the amazing new things coming out of the industry are from IBM. I don't know where they recruit for R&D, but it must be good.
If all the things IBM has been talking about inventing come out within the next ten years computers are going to kick about 100x more ass than they do today.
Too bad Microsoft can't use all it's money to actually make good stuff instead of the loads of shit it pours out. MS probably spends half their R&D money making MSN Messenger work w/ AIM. There's innovation for ya Justive Dept.
Sure, the batteries hold more juice, but now everyone will just produce laptops with even more ridiculous hardware than ever before. 15" screens, DVD drives, 256 MB of RAM, ... Call me cynical, but it's just like bloated software: We have 500 MHz machines which run about the same speed with today's software as my 486 ran years ago with that software---and I still accomplish the same tasks. Heh.
Although this is good news, I don't know if it really warrents the term "breakthrough".
Do the math. The standard battery got 3:04, or 184 minutes. The new battery got 15:01, or 901 minutes. What really matters though, is not the difference in run time, but the difference in run time per unit mass. The standard battery was only 0.6625 lbs, so a battery made from hooking 2.2 lbs worth of standard batteries together should be expected to run for 184*2.2/0.6625 = 611 minutes, or 10:11, compared to 15:01. So this is a 47% improvement.
Not bad, but I don't know how they can justify the statement that they have "more than twice the energy density" just by looking at these numbers.
Of course, these devices need to prove themselves on many other fronts before they become practical. Cost, long term reliability, charging times, and malfunction possibilities all need to be considered before endorsing a technology such as this.
I don't remember about NEC (doesn't mean it didn't happen :-)), but I do remember that Apple recalled one of their lines of PowerBooks because the new batteries they were using (yes, they were Lithium-Ion) were catching on fire. They replaced that PowerBook with a similarly-equipped model that used NiMH instead until they could get all of the bugs worked-out.
Dang! With a name like "Electrofuel" I figured that this had to be a fuel cell system. A former employer of mine was contemplating the use of a fuel cell design to power cellphones, so I'm sure it wouldn't be a stretch to power a laptop with them. Insurance and liability issues are probably the hold-up, though. Even if internal-battery model fuel cells are made only for laptop models with no battery cover (leaving an open, unencumbered exhaust vent), some fool out there would manage to block the vent, shove something in it, or otherwise blow the damn thing up in his or her lap, then file a I-dumped-McDonalds-coffee-in-my-lap lawsuit.
Oh, and I guess the market would be somewhat crimped if you were not permitted to carry the compressed gas cartridges required for a fuel cell aboard an airplane. Double-dang.
I think not...(*poof*)
They're due out shortly and they are powered by Ethanol- imagine something that weighs about 1lb and runs for that 15 hours or more...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
" I'd rather not risk having an explosive charge sitting next to my joy
department. "
Lucky you getting joy from your department.
I'm an evolutionary dead-end and would like to donate mine to medical science, or someone who needs a new one.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
I swear it wasn't me! The laptop wet my pants!
Ok so it doesn't run for 3 million years off gravity waves. It doesn't power your house and it doesn't weigh less than the electrons in this note. BFD! I easily carry 2.2lbs of batteries around to get about 3hrs on my 765D. If I could throw this in, hop on a plane do a customer meeting, fly back all on one charge w/o having to carry the AC power supply w/o having to tackle people for the one outlet in the room or wander around looking for a powerstrip that is in fact, GOOD.
Now, how many more addons will laptop manufacturers come out with .... that will knock the time right back down to three hours. Owell....
So there.
I went over to their website and poked around quite a bit and nowhere do they state the maximum discharge rate or the charging time. One of the nice things around NiCads is that they take a high charge rate and discharge rapidly. R/C Cars for example can pull 30amps out of a 9.6v pack since this type of drain will typically drain a 1700mah pack in 3-5 minutes, does that mean we could drain the 11000mah 160 in under 1/2 an hour in a typical application? Likewise, if recharge rates are high, it's better for regenerative braking and overnight charging for electric vehicles (where they only quote densities, not discharge rates as a goal)
I'm no Ph.D in anything, but wouldn't a 15hour laptop battery have the energy density of a good sized explosive device? How long until we hear of a laptop exploding? I know there are warnings on some batteries telling of the risks of overcharging today. I can't imagine the risks that a 15hr battery would bring along with it. My two hour life laptop battery is rated 7.5 amp/hours, for a 15hour, that would be 50+ amp/hours?
Honestly, I'd rather have a backpack'able battery. I carry my laptop in a carrier in a backpack already, there's room for a car-battery..
Would be nice to have. But I'd rather not risk having an explosive charge sitting next to my joy department.
-rd
> labtops that are more power hungry...large
> screens, huge displays, super
> surround sound with extra bass, huge
> processors...the list goes on...
ooh sounds good! i want one!
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
Cool, then you could blow up your phone by throwing it on the ground, like you can with a bic lighter? :)
I could probably get 1000 hours by hooking the thing to my car's battery... :-)
My journal has hot
Well I never tried running it dry, but my battery meter has never read more than 3:30, even after charging for days&days. one of the new powerbooks, mind you.
rooooar
While I love the new pbs, the price of the system you listed is a bit high. For my money ($2249 educational) I got a 333 mhz, 4gb, 64 mb. I added an extra 128 mb for $99. DVD's just not worth the extra money, afaic, and if I change my mind I can just get the vst drive later.
rooooar
That was Compaq that patented that, not IBM.
rooooar
Cool indeed, I have the 560X 233MMX machine. :-)
so, how is this thing different than the external, heavy battery pack i bought from VST for my Powerbook 100 8 years ago? my guess is that it isn't.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Fuel Cells can in fact run on many different hydrocarbon based fuels, from gasoline to pure alcohol (of any variety). The mechanism is the same in any case. The fuel acts as a Hydrogen donator, and the free hydrogens then drive the fuel cells along with oxygen from the air. The technology centers around diffusion of ions through a semipermeable insulating membrane, usually ceramic or plastic. Hydrogen gas is one one side of the membrane and oxygen gas (plain old air really but the oxygen does the work) is on the other. The hydrogens are stripped of their electron on one side of the membrane. The electrons flow to the other side of the cell (think negative to positive in battery terms) through an external circuit (be it laptop, cell phone, pager, etc) and the hydrogen diffuses through the membrane to form water with the freely available oxygen, this closes the circuit and satisfies thermodynamics, making the whole thing work.
Ideally hydrogen and oxygen would be the only two fuel components needed, but we of course do not live in an ideal world. Using pure oxygen does not offer enough of performance benefit to offset the tremendous costs of air liquefaction to obtain pure oxygen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and it surrounds us in the form of water, but this hydrogen has been sequestered by oxygen. Obtaining pure hydrogen from water using electrolosis uses a great deal of energy, making it very expensive. NASA pays about $1.05 per pound of hydrogen, versus about $0.13 per pound for gasoline at my local Exxon. For this reason most commercial fuel cells use a reformer to process any number of hydrocarbon or alcohol based fuels into usable hydrogen. Hence methanol, ethanol, methane, etc. The reformation process decreases the efficeincy of the cell somewhat, but they are still much more efficient then chemical batteries.
Fuel cells are well over 100 years old, but until recently the manufacturing technology did not exist to make them really useful. It's basically a plumbing problem. To maximize power output per volume you need to create a large surface area for diffusion. This is usually accomplished by making numerous folds in the exchange membrane. However this makes it more difficult to pipe in hyrdogen and oxygen to where they are needed. The chemistry of the devices is well understood, and it's largely a manufacturing problem now.
The July '99 issue of Scientific American had a special section devoted to fuel cells, and features articles discussing the use of cells in portable items such as phones as well as residential and commerical scale cells for homes and offices.
One other note...
"Electrofuel's super-polymer technology dedicates virtually all
the space to the battery itself and dispenses with the usual metal
package for supporting the battery cells, which can be as thin as
1 millimeter"
Scary.. A lithium cell with a 1 mm thick plastic case.. I wonder what would happen if you punctured the case with say, a pen point and shorted out the cell which was then exposed to Oxygen.. Bad things(tm) happen when Lithium metal burns..
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
By my calculations...
Thinkpad internal 10oz battery gets 17.3 minutes/oz
Powerpad 35oz battery gets 25 min/oz
Bigger batteries usually have better energy density due to less packaging per unit volume.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
My high school math teacher told us that in China it is common to drink "wood alcohol" (methanol), and, presumably because they're used to it, no ill effects result. But when he was there he had a swig or two and had to lie down for a few days.
True? Or just Mr. Philips having us on?
now this means everyone will now feel compelled to stock laptops with a gig of ram 600 mhz processors, and 17 inch screens.
First: I'd think that since a fuel cell ideally consumes hydrogen and oxygen (NASA versions), that the more pure (close to / highest percentage of hydrogen) the fuel the better the performance you'll receive.
Second: (In my best 'Bones McCoy' voice) I'm a techie, not a chemist, damnit! How do you expect me to know the difference between types of alcohol?!? Besides the obvious Jack Daniels vs Skyy vs Captain Morgan vs Everclear (foom!) =P
Third: Now that I'm done ranting, I have to admit I'm glad there are people out there who actually bothered to stay awake in HS chemistry class. Who else would check facts for those of us who don't know any better?
Besides, I don't even know if I correctly remembered which type of fuel they were using for that fuel cell! It could have been ethanol and I just don't remember. Alternatively, why not use butane? It's readily available, inexpensive, and provides it's own pressure feed! Just 'stick a bic' into your phone, and you're good for another week! Also, it avoids the alcohol questions altogether!
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
IIRC, the researchers developing it were trying to run your cell phone all month on an insert pack of methanol... or was it a week...
The important point was, for the volume the fuel cell occupied, the energy density wasn't that great, but it was enough to run a phone (about 1 watt or so). Being that heat is more of an enemy in a laptop than a phone, I'd worry about the necessity of additional cooling measures. (Can't just replace the battery in your existing laptop) The recharge times are incredible, though!
One question: If these things run on methanol (alcohol), will you have to be over 21 to purchase fuel for your laptop?
(Yes, I've thought of denatured alcohol! Sheesh!)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Interesting...
Plus, you have to wonder what all PC World (or whoever tested it) was doing with the laptop while it was running of the glorious "little" battery.. i.e., running CD, DVD, etc. versus just playing FreeCell or xboing.
Insert mind here.
This new battery technology is currently in development for Apple's PowerBooks too. Currently it can be easily plugged into the PB's AC adapter jack. Future revisions will be solid full size batteries that go into the hot-swappable bays. Since the G3 draws so little electricity (five watts as opposed to the power-gluttonous Pentiums), battery time will be enormous on an Apple laptop.
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Did I forget to mention that Apple lists the PowerBook G3 to max out at 384 MB RAM? Theoretically that means you can max it out yourself to about 512 MB RAM unless I'm mistaken. I'm not sure if there are low-profile 256 MB SO-DIMMs.
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
No. Booze alcohol is ethanol. Methonol is deadly poison - and what they contaminate ethanol with to "denature" it.
Your enzyme systems, which turn ethanol into acetaldehyde and acetic acid (vinegar), which are only mildly annoying, also turn methanol into formaldehyde and formic acid (ant toxin), which are deadly - especially to nerves. Ingest a little methanol and go blind. Even the fumes will give you a headache. I'd be a lot happier if they fueled them with ethanol - or even isopropanol (rubbing alcohol).
On the other hand, they might run about as well on ethanol as on methanol, unmodified. We'll have to see the details of the devices once they're out.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It would be nice if they'd make a version that was specifically designed to be used as a source of 12V or 16V or some other voltage, and marketed as such, not as an add-on to such and such a laptop.
As a side effect they could just make that one, and let other ppl make it work w/ whatever laptop they want. (and i'd have another choice when i get everything else in my wearable ready to be powered)
Need a Catering Connection
Anyone else notice that the article never said anything about recharging life? Maybe it's not an issue but usually those nice, dense batteries have a 'better' memory and are more difficult to recharge repeatedly.
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
This just gives everyone an ecuse to build labtops that are more power hungry...large screens, huge displays, super surround sound with extra bass, huge processors...the list goes on...
Sad really...my old 386 with the software available at the time probably runs faster then my current computer with current software.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
I was at COMDEX/Toronto in July and saw the similar/same product there. From the pic on ElectroFuel's website it looks like the same product but since I don't remember the name of the company that was at COMDEX, I'm not sure if it is the same company. They were demoing this battery with the 16hr runtime on a Toshiba(?? don't remember). It's pretty cool if you ask me.
Anyway, I picked it up and it felt like it was a lot less than 2lbs; maybe 1lb. Although, I did eat my Wheaties that morning...
15 Hours? I wonder if that is REAL time or Apple time.
- We dream of the stars. Now let us return to them.
I got an object lesson in what's really going on here when I bought an Apple Newton 2100. Now, this final Newton sure won't replace a laptop for everyone, but it did for me: email, Web surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, the works, all in something the size of a smallish trade paperback, and powered from a standard-sized LiIon battery pack that can run the Newton for between 10 and 24 hours.
The Newton pulled this off by re-examining the architecture of a portable platform. If you make low power consumption a primary driver, instead of packing in the exact same family of peripherals that you use in a desktop platform which has (relatively) infinite power available, you get a machine which doesn't look a whole lot like today's laptops - but which also doesn't require 2.2 pounds of battery to run for 15 hours, either. The Newton 2100 has a 163 MHz processor, too, not one of those 12MHz wimpy things the other handhelds have. But this 163 MHz ARM RISC processor was designed from the ground up to use as little power as possible. The result is dramatic. It's fast when it needs to be, and the rest of the time it eats almost no power at all. Compare this to what an x86 or Pentium uses - even a "low-power" model.
Oh goody, now I can run that Electric Range Peripheral on my laptop and stop leaving the grease stains on my desktop...
Diji
"I came, I saw, I WTF'd!"
ah, sorry
Anyway, software "at the time" couldn't render shadows in real time. I prefer the newer machines.