Intel Looks to Extend the Life of Your Batteries

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,105980,tk,dn101602X,00.asp">http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,105980,tk,dn101602X,00.asp</a><br /><br />It's always good to see companies cooperating and moving towards a goal, but we've been hearing about the "coming soon" fuel cell technology for years now. I just want the damn thing to arrive! One of the things I'm not looking forward to on the Tablet PC is the short battery life. With most of the models (I'm told) there won't be an option for a second battery, giving them a battery life of around two or three hours. Not bad, but my laptop didn't truly become useful to me until I purchased a second battery and got six to eight hours of runtime. <br /><br />That seems to align with the goals of this new consortium: they want to hit eight hours of life on a single battery. Let's see how long it takes them - I'm really hoping we'll see the first fuel cells become available in early 2004. Wouldn't that be nice? Sadly, I doubt we'll see widespread adoption of this technology until 2005 or 2006. Perhaps before that point we'll see adoption of OLED screens and other low-power options for mobile devices so that a regular Lithium Polymer/Ion battery will get us to that eight hour mark. <!><br /><br />"Facing greater power demands on laptops from technologies such as wireless networking, Intel has lined up a consortium of hardware makers to work on developing batteries, fuel cells, and related technologies that offer longer battery life for mobile computers. The group, called the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group, held its first meeting here on Wednesday to discuss organizational issues and its initial development priorities.<br /><br />Alongside Intel, executives from Acer, Asustek Computer, Compal Electronics, Dell Computer, First International Computer, Fujitsu, Inventec, Legend Group, LG Electronics, Matsu****a Electric Industrial, Microsoft, NEC, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Quanta Computer, and Wistron are working together to find ways to extend the life of laptop batteries up to eight hours or more on a single charge, according to a senior Intel executive."

[ChrisD]

Hmm,
Well some of the Tablet PCs have much longer battery life than 2-3 hours.

See http://www.tabletpctalk.com/faqs/hwcomparison.shtml

[WillyG]

I surfed over to Howstuffworks to get an update on how fuelcells works.
Here i find out that "Some of the more promising fuels are natural gas, propane and methanol." and that many of the technologies produses bi-products in form of gasses. Will this mean we will get Pocket Pc's with exhaust pipes? 8O
If ur interested in the technology take a look here:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell1.htm (its 7 pages) but written in a way normal geeks like us understand.

"Honey, ill be right back. Just a short trip down to the petrol station to refuel my Pocket Pc"

[Jason Dunn]

Well some of the Tablet PCs have much longer battery life than 2-3 hours.

Cool - good to know! But I think we all know that the manufacturers always have a habit of overstating the battery life - it will be interesting to see if those devices really hit five hours of life. :D

[Anthony Caruana]

I went to a Toshiba thing last year and they were talking about a trial that had run/were running. They were using fuel burning cells that gave about a month of use from a single fill of about 200 mls of fuel.

The big problem the had was with the use of flammable liquid on aircraft. At the time they said they had built a large number of prototypes and were trialling them with an airline (they did say whick one).

I suspect that the events of Sep 11 may have out this work on hold :(

[Certified Optimist]

Same old same old... You rush out to buy yet another cool toy (*coff*) I mean... tool... only to find out that you can only use it for about 5 minutes before the battery runs out...

To be able to use it you then either have to:
a) buy a looong extension cord
b) fill your pockets with spare batteries

Seems like there's a constant stream of new gadgets coming out, but the number hours one can use them remain pretty much the same...

[farnold]

When I read the headline I really believed for a second that INTEL would do anything for existing devices there. Hm, it's not about "your" batteries. It's just about batteries one is maybe likely to see some day - and that doesn't mean that they will be mine or yours. Hehe, we complain about the marketing blabla they use to make us excited. Jason, sorry mate, but that was adopted language there as well :lol:

I want battery life of weeks and standby time of months. And they are likely to bring imporovements as they did with XScale - so, will it be a battery that sounds twice as long lasting while in practice just last 80 percent of the time?

[Kre]

If you want a Tablet PC with long battery life, go check out Electrovaya's upcoming Tablet PC with their battery technology integrated into it: www.electrovaya.com

They're supposed to get around ten hours of life. And with them, I believe it. Their estimates are known for being highly accurate. The reviews of their laptop battery slates (which could run a laptop for up to 16 hours) are always positive: Very, very long battery life under heavy loads and bright screens, cool temperatures, and accurate runtime claims.

I just wish more laptop, Tablet PC, and Pocket PC manufacturers would pay more attention to this company and their battery technology.