NETWORKWORLD
All-day battery life fornetbooks
The ability to run a netbook all day on a single batterycharge is one of the goals Intel has set for itself as it developsthe Atom platform.
"We are going to do more integration, we are going to try toreduce the power in order to have sleekest form-factor, thelightest system and to increase the battery life," said Mooly Eden,head of Intel's mobile platforms group, in an interview at theComputex trade show in Taipei on Wednesday. "The idea is to deliversuch a product that will be day-long. You'll be able to go withyour netbook without the need to carry the power supply."
The target, a sure-fire way to praise from road warriors, ismore easily said than done. Most of today's laptops offer betweenthree and five hours on a standard three-cell battery and close todouble that on a six-cell battery. But the longer-life batteriesare bulkier and heavier, and that negates a lot of the reason forhaving a slim and lightweight machine.
"We'll either need to have more than a three-cell battery orhave some kind of prismatic battery, which is not necessarily acell, or wait until the chemistry and physics improve and peoplewill be able to give us higher density," said Eden.
Energy density is a measure of the amount of energy that canbe held by a battery for a given unit of volume. Increasing itwould mean a battery could supply more power without being madebigger. However, achieving significant advances could takeyears.
Battery life can be extended by reducing the amount of powerconsumed by components in the PC. Intel has been doing that withsuccessive versions of Atom and the "Pine Trail" chips it justlaunched consolidate the Atom platform from three chips to twochips, helping cut power consumption.
But components outside of its control, such as the screen,consume considerable amounts of power. There's also the seeminglyincompatible demands of users to have higher performance netbookswith more features and longer battery life.
A possible option would be to ditch the battery altogether andswitch to a fuel cell. Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFCs) have beenunder development for use in laptops for many years but have yet tobe commercialized. They produce power from a reaction betweenmethanol and air and can be recharged with a squirt of fuel in muchthe same way lighters can be replenished. However even if DMFCswere realized soon the likely high price of the first models wouldrule them out of use in netbooks.
Energy density is a measure of the amount of energy that canbe held by a battery for a given unit of volume. Increasing itwould mean a battery could supply more power without being madebigger. However, achieving significant advances could takeyears.
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