New laptop accessory: The nonexploding battery!
(Credit: CNET)There's plenty of blame to be passed around for 2006's spate of exploding laptop-battery incidents and the accompanying mass battery recalls. After all, anytime major PC vendors have to recall more than 10 million batteries, it might be time to rethink your portable power strategy.
Rather than play the old blame game, Matsushita--parent company of the Panasonic brand, among others--has decided to get out in front of the problem and start mass-producing a newer, safer form of lithium-ion battery. The company has been putting out a few batteries with a new heat-resistance layer since April, but is now kicking a new mass-production system into action.
Of course, we could all sit around and wait for the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) to figure out its new laptop battery standards, but those aren't expected until the end of 2007, and we'd rather not spend another year sitting in coach worrying about flaming laptops.
years, the average battery life of a computer has stayed the same or gone DOWN
in most cases, while processor speed and everything else has skyrocketed. Who
cares how fast it goes if you can't even watch an entire movie or write a report
for more than 2.5 hours!
Whoever comes up with a good alternative will make a huge fortune!