Aving have published some photo’s of the latest incarnation of the Samsung SDI fuel cell which is supposed to be able to run a laptop for 30 days. (8 hours per day, 240 hours at, lets say, 20W average is near 5KW/h. Wow!) Unfortunately its nearly as big as a small UMPC and there’s no real details about what’s inside it. I don’t want to sound negative but having looked at the Samsung SDI fuel cell website it looks complex (expensive) and physically bulky. Its going to be a long time before it gets down to consumer prices and even longer for it to reach UMPC battery sizes. Don’t think that bigger battery power is going to give you higher processing capability either because heat dissipation in the silicon is a problem regardless of how much battery life you have. Battery friendly operating systems and components are the key for the next few years at least.
Mind you, if it proves worthwhile for a notebook PC then it might kick the battery industry into speeding up research. I always have the strange feeling that they don’t really want to increase battery too quickly life due to the rather bad effect it would have on their profits. Call me skeptical Steve!
