Lightning in a Bottle

Toshiba has demonstrated a fuel-cell powered laptop to be brought to the market in 2004 (www.heraldnet.com/Stories/03/8/24/17151234.cfm). It’s expected to run five hours per methanol cartridge, while two years down the road they plan on models that will reach 40 hours of use.

Part of the hassle of using portable computing devices in education is keeping them continuously charged. Battery life is still less than a full school day on virtually anything with a color screen, except a few handheld computers. Perhaps sometime soon we’ll break free from that constraint. Still, it will mean swapping dead fuel cells out of computers (how long does that take with a lab full of machines?), and keeping boxes of new, flammable fuel cells somewhere. Will we just trade on hassle for another?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2003 at 9:07 am and is filed under Technology Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.