The battery in my laptop is ailing. It once held a charge for a respectable 3+ hours; now it barely breaks the one-hour mark. And now I find out that I have been hastening its decrepitude all along. I have always let the battery drain completely before recharging it, a piece of battery folk-wisdom I picked up somewhere. But, apparently, according to this site, Lithium Ion batteries actually wear out faster if drained every time. , Awesome...
Why are we still cursed with chemical batteries? I realize that battery technology is getting better and better every year, and that new batteries are smaller, cheaper and last longer than the ones being made even a few years ago, and that this trend is bound to continue. Still, it feels like batteries are an awkward hold-over from an earlier age; the last few years have seen a transition to flash memory, wireless data transfer, and superthin LCD and plasma screens in many mobile devices. Laptops and cell phones are getting tinier and tinier, with only two factors imposing size restraints on them: the user-interface and the battery. Workarounds are possible (and often fascinating) with user interfaces: iTap, voice-commands, and touchscreens all help to mitigate the lack of space issue. But batteries remain, relatively, big and clunky, and there's nothing we can do about it.
The battery on my Moto Razr makes up most of the weight of the device, and doubles its thickness. The battery on my iBook will cost several hundred dollars to replace. Can't we do better than this? I dearly hope some crazy engineer somewhere is working on miniature hydrogen fuel cell technology. Or tiny, well-contained cold fusion drives. Or bitsy little hamsters on treadmills. Something--give us something.
I suppose we're stuck with chemical batteries for the forseeable future, but *dang* it's frustrating. Computer can do so much now, with no wires and fewer and fewer moving parts. But how can anything that you have to chain to the wall every few hours be considered *truly* wireless and portable?
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I was involved in a fuel cell project at a major tech company a few years back. Looks like it has real promise. Right now it is a bit like the old CRT vs. Flat Panel race. CRT's kept getting better and dirt cheap so that it pushed out the day when most people finally switched to flat panels.
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