Alcohol-powered laptops!

Quote:

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Toshiba has unveiled a prototype fuel cell it hopes will become the power source for laptops in the future.

The fuel cell breaks down methanol to generate power and, Toshiba claims, will provide enough juice to run a laptop for about five hours.
To get the cell working, the alcohol fuel is provided in small 50cc cartridges.
Toshiba hopes to put the fuel cell on sale in early 2004.

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Taken from here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2847679.stm

Woohooo! Soon i'll be able to use one my favourite quotes from the Simpsons - "One for you, one for me"
:D

Joking aside, I think Toshiba are looking in the right direction, and they have obviously spent a long time on this, as according to the article existing laptops can work for 5 hours, whilst future versions should be able to run for 10 hours. I dont own a laptop yet, so how does this compare with the current running time for a fully charged battery?

Quote:

---

Toshiba has unveiled a prototype fuel cell it hopes will become the power source for laptops in the future.

The fuel cell breaks down methanol to generate power and, Toshiba claims, will provide enough juice to run a laptop for about five hours.
To get the cell working, the alcohol fuel is provided in small 50cc cartridges.
Toshiba hopes to put the fuel cell on sale in early 2004.

---

Taken from here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2847679.stm

Woohooo! Soon i'll be able to use one my favourite quotes from the Simpsons - "One for you, one for me"
:D

Joking aside, I think Toshiba are looking in the right direction, and they have obviously spent a long time on this, as according to the article existing laptops can work for 5 hours, whilst future versions should be able to run for 10 hours. I dont own a laptop yet, so how does this compare with the current running time for a fully charged battery?

> Wow, its crazy of what people are doing now! thanks for the info. DIdn't here about that one till just now.

> Wow, its crazy of what people are doing now! thanks for the info. DIdn't here about that one till just now.

Current laptop batteries are providing about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours of life. Five hours sounds sweet to me. But are they trying to lock you into a proprietary means of powering your laptop so that you have to buy from them?

PuRe

Wow ... thats cool. I had no idea that they were messing with different ways to power labtops or computers in general. That is cool.

I think there is a joke in there someplace...

A man walks into a bar with his laptop and says to the bartender, "I want some alcohol"... :)

yea, it's sweet cuz it's new, but from the article, it sounds like once your 5 or 10hrs (in future) is up, you have to go buy more fuel, fine and dandy, but when my two hours are up on my laptop, it doens't cost me anything to refuel it. (aka Charge it). Personally, gimme battery any day. At least this way, I don't have to pay to charge my laptop.

well that is not all true, because you do pay for electricity right? =) Though I doubt that it costs more to charge a battery/run your laptop on AC than buying "fuel" for a laptop.

So how do you walk into an AA meeting with a laptop and explain you "just drove him here"? ... :drink:

the reason fuel cells are not used for most things is because of the cost of producing the electricity is super high still , hmm laptop+ alcohol + electricity +damage= fire