October 04, 2005
making portable devices more portable
so i have had a laptop for the past 4 years. i'm generally pretty happy with it, however, in the past year the battery has gone from bad to crappy-like-all-get-out. at this point i can no longer unplug my computer even for a second without it crashing. so at this point i guess i can say that it's not so much a portable computer as a small and light-weight stationary one. however, even brand new laptops today have an expected battery life of a few hours. doesn't that seem a wee bit odd?
recently i (finally) bought an mp3 player. one of the main issues of comparison between the various brands of players is their battery life. it strikes me as odd and archaic that these new technologies are limited by something as trivial as battery power.
so i read a little blurb in the newspaper today about new technology for batteries and had a little moment of "well, thank goodness" and "it's about friggin time". i went online to find out more about how researchers are developing fuel cell technology to replace the current battery systems we have in portable devices. This article from PCWorld - Better Battery Life for your DigiCam, MP3 player?does a decent job explaining the development of a hydrogen powered fuel cell.
Consumers would install the fuel cells as small credit-card-size cartridges. The fuel cell would contain pellets of hydrogen-storing mixture, as well as an ignition system and a microprocessor. When a battery's energy level deteriorated, the microprocessor would initiate the combustion of a pellet, generating hydrogen to power the fuel cell. That would provide energy to recharge the battery. Once all the pellets on a cartridge had been consumed, a new cartridge would need to be inserted.
we'll see what happens to this technology in the future - i'm not holding my breath until my cell phone is powered by one of these - but it's nice to know that the problem is being addressed.
Posted by lara at October 4, 2005 05:28 AM
