Squeezing More Life Out of Your Notebook's Battery Part I : The Eight-Hour Battery Life Notebook
- 1. The Eight-Hour Battery Life Notebook
- 2. Battery Life As A Turnover Multiplier For Vendors
- 3. Battery Life Is Only The Second Most Important Purchase Factor
- 4. Battery Life Is Only The Second Most Important Purchase Factor, Continued
- 5. Intel Claims That The Display And Chipset Consume More Energy Than The CPU
- 6. A Brief Summation Of Battery History And Battery Types
- 7. Higher Energy Density: The Rechargeable Nickel Metal Hydride Battery
- 8. The Li-Ion Battery Isn't Perfect, Either
- 9. Battery Care And Preservation
- 10. Battery In The 'fridge?
- 11. Buyer Beware 1: Old Battery In A New Notebook
- 12. Typical Notebook Batteries
- 13. Frequently-asked Question 1: How Do I Determine My Battery's Capacity?
- 14. Frequently-asked Question 2: How Charged Is My Battery?
- 15. Frequently-asked Question 2: How Charged Is My Battery? Continued
1. The Eight-Hour Battery Life Notebook
According to Intel, eight-hour notebook battery lives are less than two years away.
Increased mobility is what sets a notebook apart from its desktop PC counterpart, but unfortunately, a laptop is only as good as its battery charge unless it is tethered by a cord plugged into a socket. A notebook's worth and performance thus largely hinge on how well its components can make use of power. Users also expect their notebook's performance to be on par with a desktop PC, while more PC computing power inevitably translates into a greater drain on the battery.
A Joint Industry Vision
The pursuit of better notebook performance while extending battery life is a big part of what the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group's mission is about. One of the Mobile PC EBL's main goals is the eventual design of a notebook with an all-day battery life.
Mobile PC EBLWG traces its origins back to Intel's "Battery Life Initiative," begun in early 2002. While it was Intel's hope to convince notebook component and subsystem builders that the company's vision of an eight-hour notebook batter life had merit, Mobile PC EBLWG represents an industry consortium as opposed to a single company's initiative. Leading system, subsystem and component vendors work together to transform the vision of a notebook with an eight-hour battery life into reality by 2008. The Members Page reads like a "Who's Who" among the notebook elite. There, you'll find AMD and Intel, system vendors such as Compal and Wistron alongside both of the major graphics processor makers ATI and NVIDIA, memory makers Infineon and Samsung and display and notebook OEMs Dell, HP and Lenovo IBM. Naturally, software vendors like Microsoft and battery manufacturers, as well as fuel cell makers, are also involved. The participants jointly develop standards and technologies to ensure that building blocks, materials, components and even software make the most efficient use of stored energy in a notebook PC's battery. In addition, the group is looking into new kinds of energy storage systems (better known as energy delivery systems such as fuel cells) to be developed for installation and use in laptop computers.
- Next page Battery Life As A Turnover Multiplier...
Neither do NiCad or NiMH batteries, of course, unless you're using them in a geosync satellite power system. With a charging system as smart as the one required for Li-ion or Li-polymer, NiMH batteries don't suffer from overcharge and the resulting voltage depression (what's generally mistaken for a "memory effect" in the association cited). I wouldn't be surprised to see some notebooks returning to NiMH, albeit the new low self-discharge types.