Fuel Cells Give Laptops 10-Hour Life

Korean company LG Chem has been designing a fuel cell technology useful enough to power a laptop computer. We heard a few weeks ago about the improvements in fuel cell technology that may lead it to be present in mini devices such as mp3 players. This is on a bit larger scale, but the exact same idea – The demand for very long battery life is exceeding the supply of affordable market batteries. This design from LG Chem is supposedly able to deliver 25W of Power for a period of up to 10 hours, 3 to 6 times longer than most current laptop batteries. It weighs close to 1KG, a bit heavy for a light notebook but still in line with the weight of batteries, and takes methanol cartridges to power. Though details weren't released on what method they are using, it does not share the same technology that Toshiba's fuel cells do, as it has all been developed in house.

We may see all this come to market in less than a year. 10 hours of life out of a laptop? If that proves itself to be true, coupled with the decreasing power consumption from components and the promise from some vendors of 5W mobile CPUs, laptops will just become that much more attractive.