Thursday, October 17, 2002
Intel Looks to Extend the Life of Your Batteries
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 03:06 PM
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,105980,tk,dn101602X,00.asp
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.
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.
"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.
Alongside Intel, executives from Acer, Asustek Computer, Compal Electronics, Dell Computer, First International Computer, Fujitsu, Inventec, Legend Group, LG Electronics, Matsushita 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."
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.
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.
"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.
Alongside Intel, executives from Acer, Asustek Computer, Compal Electronics, Dell Computer, First International Computer, Fujitsu, Inventec, Legend Group, LG Electronics, Matsushita 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."
