I’m currently at an altitude of around 10’000 meters, somewhere near the north pole, flying from Narita to München, and hopefully, Switzerland. My flight has wireless access point and my seat neighbor, a ukrainian sailor, gave me a prepaid card of 30 minutes of internet, so I blog.
Laptops are very convenient and with more and more wireless access point, can be used in more and more places, but power has always been the weak point. Lately there have been quite a few problem with bad batteries. Apple had to recall one million of them, this includes one of those for my laptop, and three in various laptops in our lab. Because of this I only have one battery with me (I would not like to fligh with a battery susceptible to catch fire).
Still one good thing might come out of this, constructors finally agreed to standardize batteries. I don’t know if they will only standardize the cells, or also the enclosures, but any step in that direction is a welcome improvement. Imagine a service where you could rent one standard battery in one airport and return it in another, that would be a nice business model no?
Safe travel, and happy travel.
I m not sure we can see this any time soon. Mean we all have to change our laptop for it to be possible! So it would take at least 4 to 5 years… Are we still going to use standard battery in 5 years?
What about fuel cells a lot of laptop companies are inversting a lot in thoses technologies that could well emerge in 5 years and render this standard to nothing!
This standard thing can outlast battery technology advances if done smartly (OK, fat chance of that): basically, as long as it applies to form factor, connectors and power output, whatever’s actually inside the battery does not matter much.