According to a Reuters article NEC is developing a long-life fuel cell for notebook computers:
Japanese chips-to-computers giant NEC said Monday that it has developed a small fuel cell that will dramatically improve the battery life of notebooks and that the company aims to test on the market within two years that.
The fuel cell would enable notebooks to operate for 40 consecutive hours, or around 10 times the life of regular lithium-ion batteries, a company representative said.
The company is locked in fierce competition with domestic rivals such as Toshiba, as well as United States and South Korean rivals that are rushing to bring fuel-cell technology for notebooks to the mass market.
NEC aims to test the market in 2004, introducing a notebook that has a built-in fuel-cell battery with a life of five hours, the representative said.
MacEdition claims that Apple is actively pursuing Fuel Cell technology for future PowerBooks…
According to a Reuters article NEC is developing a long-life fuel cell for notebook computers:
Japanese chips-to-computers giant NEC said Monday that it has developed a small fuel cell that will dramatically improve the battery life of notebooks and that the company aims to test on the market within two years that.
The fuel cell would enable notebooks to operate for 40 consecutive hours, or around 10 times the life of regular lithium-ion batteries, a company representative said.
The company is locked in fierce competition with domestic rivals such as Toshiba, as well as United States and South Korean rivals that are rushing to bring fuel-cell technology for notebooks to the mass market.
NEC aims to test the market in 2004, introducing a notebook that has a built-in fuel-cell battery with a life of five hours, the representative said.
MacEdition claims that Apple is actively pursuing Fuel Cell technology for future PowerBooks:
The Blade isn?t the only Mac player throwing fuel on the fire these days, at least according to certain highly placed officials in the Rubinstein administration who maintain that Apple is in hot pursuit of fuel-cell technology for a veritable tsunami of future PowerBooks.
According to the Blade?s beady-eyed moles, Apple is as aware as the next hardware manufacturer of the potential of fuel cells as a superior source of portable power to the charge-constrained batteries weighing down today?s laptops. They report that Apple has been feverishly seeking out fuel-cell companies that might accept their investment dollars ? and afford it a competitive advantage in this up-and-coming market.
Apple hardly has the field to itself. Most notably, Intel has been approaching most of the same players ? with the caveat that it won?t invest in any fuel-cell company that also deals with Apple. By contrast, IBM is reportedly more than happy to play nicely with La Pomme; besides looking to power its own Intel-based ThinkPads with fuel cells, Big Blue will gladly see the technology put at the service of future Apple laptops ? especially if they?re to be based on IBM?s PowerPC 970 (a k a G5) processor.
So serious is Apple about the potential of fuel-cell technology, sources report, that the company is willing to adapt its next-generation PowerBooks to accommodate a fuel cell instead of insisting that the winning supplier provide a fuel cell that fits into the battery compartment of current PowerBook designs.
