Hewlett-Packard will begin selling on Monday Latitude D510 laptop batteries that are guaranteed to last three years.

The batteries use Sonata cells from Boston Power, a startup battery maker that has developed a Lithium Ion battery that can last for a thousand charging cycles without degrading. That's about two to three times more than a typical lithium ion battery. Further, the Sonata batteries will charge to 80 percent of their capacity in 30 minutes, which is faster than most other lithium ion Latitude D505 batteries.

From Monday HP will offer the batteries through its online store for 18 models in its consumer laptop range. The machines represent about 70 percent of all consumer laptops sold by HP.

And from later in March they'll be available to customers buying new PCs.

The computer maker with brand the Latitude D500 batteries "Enviro," which highlights their green credentials. Longer lasting batteries mean fewer or no replacements need to be bought so waste is reduced and could even help extend the useful life of old machines. The batteries themselves also contain no PVC and have earned the Nordic Ecolabel certification.

Recycling of the batteries will be handled by HP through the same channels it currently uses.

The batteries will cost US$150, which is about $20 more expensive than most of the replacement batteries currently listed by Inspiron 600m HP.

For now they won't be available on HP's business laptop range but Christina Lampe-Onnerud, CEO of Boston Power, said talks continue with HP and she's hopeful they will come to more of the company's laptop computers.

The deal with HP to sell the new Inspiron 510m batteries represents the first validation of Boston Power's technology from a major laptop vendor. The Massachusetts company was founded in 2005 and produces its batteries in China and Taiwan.

Battery life is a key aspect of a laptop, especially to travelers who don't have easy access to a laptop battery power outlet. To test the new MacBook and MacBook Pro for battery life, we performed a battery-drain test by watching a movie clip ripped from a DVD to the laptop's hard drive. We played the movie at full screen, with the screen brightness set to maximum to simulate the low lighting of an airplane cabin. If the movie finished and the battery still had power, we played the movie again, until the 6Y270 battery drained.

The new 2.4GHz and 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo MacBooks have comparable battery capacities, each lasting a little over 2 hours, 30 minutes. That's plenty long for most movies, though if you're watching "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring"you might miss the end. However, these results indicate that the new MacBook has about 22 to 24 minutes shorter battery life than the old white plastic 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook, which finished our test at 2 hours, 57 312-0068 minutes.

Since the two new MacBook Pro models each have a pair of graphics cards, we ran the battery life test using each one, resulting two battery life scores for each MacBook Pro. At the MacBook unveiling last week, Steve Jobs boasted that with the MacBook Pro's Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics card enabled you could achieve up to 5 hours of battery life, and 4 hours with the GeForce 9600M (the same graphics subsystem in the new MacBook). We're guessing that he didn't expect users to replicate those times while playing DVDs. Instead, those projected times likely are the results of tests that were not as demanding on the Latitude D610 computer, like word-processing or Web browsing.
While watching a movie, you can expect battery life of roughly half of those projected times. Using the 9600M GT graphics card, the 2.53GHz MacBook Pro lasted 2 hours, 12 minutes, while the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro lasted 2 hours, 18 minutes. You'll barely be able to watch an entire movie in that amount of time. That said, you really don't need the better performance of the 9600M GT while watching a movie.

Movies run just as smooth on the 9400M, and you'll get longer Latitude D600 battery life. Unfortunately, when using the 9400M, the battery life for either MacBook Pro model did not improve significantly. The 2.53GHz MacBook Pro gained 17 minutes, while the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro lasted 13 minutes longer. Interestingly, the 9400M times between the MacBook Pro models and the MacBooks are similar.

Comparing the MacBook Pro's 9400M battery life with the previous MacBook Pro, and the older MacBook Pro comes out ahead by 15 percent--the older MacBook Pro's battery lasted close to 3 hours.

While the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros do not have the battery capacity that many users demand for a long distance travel, they still should get your through most feature length movies. These tests are only one kind of Latitude D520 battery test and do not in any way indicate the expected battery life for while doing everyday tasks, like email, Web browsing, writing text, etc.

Three of the biggest laptop computer makers are recalling certain 6T473 batteries because of a risk they may overheat and catch fire. Sony made the batteries and the recall mirrors -- yet appears a lot smaller than -- a similar one that occurred two years ago.

This time, around 100,000 batteries are affected, a fraction of the 9.6 million recalled in 2006. Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba have already issued recalls for the batteries that were used in their products and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said "consumers should stop using recalled laptop battery products immediately."

The batteries in question were manufactured between October 2004 and June 2005 and to date there have been about 40 incidents reportedly globally of Inspiron 5100 laptop battery overheating, Sony said Friday.

Most of the incidents are believed to be due to manufacturing line adjustments made during the period that may laptop battery have affected some batteries, Sony said. Additionally some may have been due to raw material flaws.

Of the 100,000 batteries affected, around 35,000 were used in laptops shipped in the U.S. By far the greatest number, about 32,000, were shipped with HP laptops.

The maker said it is recalling Inspiron 1100 batteries that have a barcode label beginning with A0, L0, L1 or GC that were shipped with HP Pavilion dv1000, dv8000 and zd8000 models; with Compaq Presario v2000 and v2400 machines and with HP Compaq nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230,nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120 and nx9600 computers.

Toshiba's U.S. recall covers around 3,000 Satellite A70/A75, P30/P5, M30X/M35X and M50/M55 laptops and Tecra A3, A5 and S2 C1295 laptop battery computers.

Dell is recalling battery model OU091 in Latitude 110L and Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150 and 5160 computers.

Consumers who believe they have batteries that have been recalled should stop using the batteries and check with their PC vendor.

An additional 2,000 batteries were shipped in the Japanese market and the remaining 63,000 went to consumers in other regions, including Europe and Asia. Recall notices for machines shipped in these other regions are expected to be issued 1X793 laptop battery shortly.

Laptops are closing the price gap on less-powerful Latitude D620 netbooks, with retailers delivering fully equipped systems for under US$300 as part of promotional offers.

Wal-Mart will start offering limited quantities of a fully loaded Compaq laptop for $298 starting July 26, according to an entry on Wal-Mart's Checkoutblog site.

The laptop being offered is a Compaq Presario CQ60-419WM from Hewlett-Packard, which is powered by Advanced Micro Devices' Sempron SI-42 processor running at 2.1GHz. The laptop comes with Windows Vista and includes a 15.6-inch screen, 3GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and Nvidia's GeForce 8200M integrated graphics. It also includes a DVD-RW drive, according to RC107 specifications provided by HP.

For such a low price, the laptop is packed with features and could run out of stock quickly. "We expect this one will be quite popular," wrote a Wal-Mart official going by the name of Ryan in the blog entry. Wal-Mart didn't clarify whether the offering would be in-store or online, and the retailer didn't immediately return requests for comment.

The offer follows a Y9943 move earlier this week by Best Buy to offer an Acer laptop with a 15.6-inch screen for $299. The offer was later pulled after Best Buy ran out of stock, according to a report in CNET. The laptop was powered by a single-core AMD Athlon 64 running at 2.0GHz and ran Windows Vista. The laptop also included 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.

By comparison, the cheapest netbook on Wal-Mart's online store is available for $238 and is less powerful than the Compaq laptop. The Asus Eee PC900HD includes an 8.9-inch screen Inspiron 640m and runs on an Intel Atom N270 at 1.6GHz. It includes 512MB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive and comes with Windows XP.

Mainstream laptop prices have dipped under the $300 mark just a few times, including in 2007, when Toshiba offered a laptop for $299. Most of the mainstream laptops listed on Wal-Mart's site today are priced over $350.

Wal-Mart also plans to add a "very cool Acer laptop" with an eight-hour Inspiron 630m battery life over the next few days, according to the company. It also plans to add a HP netbook.

One Laptop Per Child spin-off Pixel Qi on Thursday said it will soon start shipping low-power screens that could increase Latitude D820 laptop battery life by up to 50 percent.

The company's LCD (liquid crystal display) screens include technology to absorb natural light sources to brighten screens, said Mary Lou Jepsen, founder and CEO of Pixel Qi. That helps save battery life as it reduces the need for a backlight, which is used to light up conventional laptop screens.

"Instead of cranking up the backlight to laptop battery fight sunlight or the light of the office overhead fluorescent tubes, we realized we could use the brilliant ambient light in the image itself, saving power," said Jepsen.

A casual laptop user may see laptop battery life jump from three hours to four-and-a-half hours by switching to the light-powered laptop battery +screens, Jepsen said. The new screens will provide full color depth and refresh rates that are comparable to conventional laptop screens.

The screens pull as much ambient light from sources as possible, but the technology may not work effectively for users watching DVD movies in dark rooms, Jepsen said.

"The conventional LCD screens in computers are just miniature LCD-TVs. That's perfect, if all you want to do is watch movies all day, sitting in a TD175 laptop battery darkened room, with the device plugged in," Jepsen said, in an e-mail interview.

Low power consumption of the screen, one of the more power-hungry components on a laptop, could lead to cheaper and lighter laptops, Jepsen said.

"Instead of putting six battery cells into this model, I'll tryLatitude D620 laptop battery fewer or use less-powerful cells, making the machine lighter and cheaper, and the battery life exactly the same," Jepsen said.

The small bump in battery life isn't close to Jepsen's previous plans of laptop battery life between 20 and 40 hours. However, Jepsen said Pixel Qi is working to blur the line between the screen and motherboard, which could boost battery life more.

"We'll get to larger PC764 laptop battery power savings later so the screen can enable much longer battery life, but for that we need the manufacturers to make changes in the motherboard, which will come in 2010-11," Jepsen said.

The screens will ship for sampling in a few months and be in laptops by the middle of the year, Jepsen said. Initially, the company will ship 10-inch screens. She didn't name PC makers that would eventually use those screens in laptops.

A variant of Pixel Qi's low-power screen technology was first implemented in OLPC's XO laptops. That effort was led by Jepsen, who formerly was OLPC's chief technology 312-0386 laptop battery officer and contributed to a patent in low-power screen design.

She stirred up a controversy when she left nonprofit OLPC in 2007 to start the for-profit Pixel Qi, with the goal to create a US$75 laptop using technologies she invented at OLPC. The company is now focusing on development of low-power screens.

Does your laptop spend more time on your desk than your laptop laptop battery? If so, you're probably causing your battery to wear out much sooner than it needs to.

See, it's a sad (and expensive) fact of life: You're lucky to get 18-24 months from a battery before it loses a good chunk of its charge capacity (meaning it no longer powers your laptop for as long as it used to).

And you're accelerating this unfortunate timeframe if you leave your laptop Latitude D830 plugged in 24/7, which is common for most folks who work at a desk. Because the MM165 battery rarely (if ever) gets a chance to discharge, it loses its capacity to hold a charge.

The simple solution: Pull the battery out of the laptop and leave it out when you're deskbound. Most laptops can run on straight AC power, so there's no need for the battery. And it's easy enough to pop back in when you hit the road (though obviously you'll want to make sure it's charged, so plan ahead a bit).

It's a hassle, sure, but consider the price of a replacement YD626 battery: usually US$100 or more. What's more, old, discarded batteries wreak havoc on landfills. Sooner or later, they'll leak acid into the ground. So it's in your best interests to keep your battery as long as possible, and to keep it from dying a premature death.
Everyone wants longer battery life, within reason there are some tricks to help get the most out of your laptop's battery.

One fact we all have to accept is that laptop battery life degrades over time. While modern Lithium Ion 312-0393 batteries found in laptops today are much more resistant to degradation they do still lose performance after a couple of years.

After 3 years of reasonable use you will be entering the stage of possible total Latitude D800 battery failure.

Dell on Tuesday announced a series of Latitude laptops, including its lightest ultramobile commercial GD761 laptop laptop battery yet and a larger system that the company claimed provides 19 hours of battery life.

The company's Latitude E6400 runs for as much as 10 hours on a single nine-cell battery, and an additional battery that snaps on to the bottom of the laptop adds as much as nine hours of battery life, Dell officials said at a press event in San Francisco. That gives users close to a full day of laptop use without carrying an AC adapter to recharge the batteries.

Dell has developed proprietary laptop battery laptop battery technology to boost battery life in the laptop, said Jeff Clarke, senior vice president and general manager at Dell. The technology focuses on making components suck less power from the battery, Clarke said. For example, the refresh rate of a screen is reduced under certain conditions. Dell needed to develop related software and work with component manufacturers to enable these capabilities.

The company has also added those power-saving features to other Latitude models, but a Dell spokesman wouldn't say whether they would also be available on the Inspiron line of consumer laptops. The battery life was measured using standard industry benchmarks, Dell officials said.

The Latitude E6400 comes with a 14.1-inch screen and runs an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It can have as much as 8G bytes of RAM and 250G bytes of storage. The system Inspiron E1505 laptop battery comes preloaded with Windows Vista, with an option to downgrade to Windows XP. It is priced starting at US$1,139. The Latitude E6500, a similar laptop with a larger screen, was also announced, starting at $1,169. Both systems are available immediately.

Dell has also added some other power-related enhancements to new laptops and said it would offer a smaller and lighter AC adapter that enables batteries to recharge more quickly. Some of the new Latitudes will also be able to recharge consumer electronics, such as a Inspiron 6400 laptop battery cell phone, via USB (Universal Serial Bus) without the laptop being switched on, according to the company.

In addition, Dell announced new ultraportable laptops, including the Latitude E4200, which the company said is its smallest and lightest commercial laptop to date. It comes with a 12.1-inch screen and weighs just under 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram). Another ultraportable, the Latitude E4300, has a 13.3-inch screen and weighs 3.3 pounds. Both are powered by Intel Core 2 Duo ultra-low voltage (ULV) processors running between 1.40GHz and 2.40GHz. Pricing information has not been announced, but the laptops will be available in the coming weeks, a Dell spokesman Inspiron 8600 laptop battery said.
Future ultramobile Latitudes could feature Dell's On technology, with which users will be able to access the Web, e-mail messages and contacts without loading the operating system, the company said. Dell previewed the technology at the event but didn't give complete details.

Dell rounded out Tuesday's announcements 8N544 laptop battery with budget and semi-rugged Latitude laptops. The E5400 and E5500 laptops, available immediately, come with a variety of screen sizes, with prices starting at $839. The semi-rugged E6400 ATG laptop, which meets the U.S. Army's standards to withstand dust and humidity, will be available next week starting at $2,399.

Dell has seen its laptop shipments grow since it signed up retailers worldwide to sell them, a move away from its Web-based sales model. It is the second-largest PC retailer behind HP, shipping 11.56 million units in the second quarter for a 16.4 percent market share, according to IDC. That represented a 21.4 percent year-over-year Inspiron 8500 laptop battery increase, IDC said.

 

IDG News Service ¡ª Toshiba is planning a big increase in production of a new type of Lithium Ion 312-0292 battery that can charge to 90 percent of its capacity in a few minutes and is highly-resistant to short circuits.

The Super Charge Ion Battery (SCIB) is a Lithium Ion battery based on proprietary technology developed by the company and is targeted at both industrial and electric vehicle applications and consumer laptop computer use.

Production of the battery, which has been in development for several years, has already begun for the industrial market at the relatively low volume of 150,000 cells per month.

Toshiba will increase that to laptop battery laptop battery several tens of millions of cells per month at a new factory it plans to build in Kashiwazaki in Niigata prefecture in north west Japan, it said Wednesday. Construction of the factory will begin in late 2009 and production is scheduled to begin a year later, said Hiroko Mochida, a Toshiba spokeswoman.

Initial production at the factory, which represents an investment of several tens of billions laptop battery of yen (several hundred million US dollars), will likely be aimed at the industrial and electric vehicle markets although the same lines will be able to make SCIBs for Inspiron 2200 laptop computers, she said.

At September's Ceatec show in Japan Toshiba demonstrated a laptop running on an SCIB. The battery will keep its performance through up to 6,000 recharges -- more than ten times that of typical Lithium Ion batteries -- meaning a laptop should be able to run its lifetime on the SCIB without need to replace the battery. Due to its design it is also much less likely to catch fire or short circuit if crushed or Inspiron 1000 laptop battery damaged.

Each SCIB cell offers a nominal voltage of 2.4 volts and a capacity of 4.2 ampere hours. Ten of them are typical combined to make a battery for industrial use and less would be required for a laptop battery.

Kashiwazaki along TD347 laptop battery with the neighboring city of Kariwa is perhaps best known as site of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, which is the largest nuclear power plant in the world by output. The plant is currently idle after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake took it off line in July 2007.

Toshiba said it chose Kashiwazaki because of the city's promotion of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles and associated businesses. As part of that promotion Toshiba will receive KD476 laptop battery certain subsidies from the city.

IDG News Service ¡ª Engineers at Panasonic have succeeded in reducing the size of a prototype laptop battery methanol fuel cell so that it's no larger than a laptop battery pack but provides all-day power.

The fuel cell, which the Japanese company has been developing for the last eight years, was first shown at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2006. At that time it was about double the size of a laptop battery, but the Latitude X300 battery latest version, due to be unveiled later this week at an event in Japan, is half the size, Panasonic said Monday.

The new version has a volume of 270 cubic centimeters and can deliver an average power of 10 watts with a peak output of 20 watts, Panasonic said. It weighs 320 grams.

On a 200cc charge of methanol it should be able to deliver power for 20 hours -- considerably longer than the Lithium Ion BAT3151L8 batteries used in laptop PCs today -- and when the methanol gets low all that's required is a quick refill and it's back to full capacity. This fast recharge is seen as one of the key advantages of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). They are also viewed as more environmentally friendly than Lithium Ion batteries because the only by-product is a little water and carbon dioxide.

Additionally Panasonic has also developed a stand-alone DMFC charger that has a couple of USB power outlets and can be used to recharge dead gadgets such as iPods and cell phones when away from a power socket. The recharger is slightly larger at 360cc and 1G222 battery weighs 350 grams.

Both will get their first public showing at the Hydrogen Energy Advanced Technology Exhibition 2008 that is due to open Wednesday in the western Japanese city of Fukuoka.

Neither is likely to go on sale soon. Panasonic doesn't have any firm plans for commercialization but said it hopes to have them on the market INSPIRON 2650 battery by the end of 2012.

A handful of big-name consumer electronics companies have been developing DMFCs for the last several years, but are yet to bring the products to market. For the last few years most companies have vaguely stated "next year" as a commercialization date but it's an answer that's given no matter when asked.

That might be about to change. Toshiba recently made the clearest promise yet to DMFC commercialization: sometime during its current financial year, which ends in March 2009. At the recent Ceatec show in Japan the company demonstrated a working cell phone that included a DMFC, but INSPIRON 2600 battery Toshiba isn't letting on yet if this will be its first product.

In some respects, life as a laptop-carrying frequent flyer has gotten a little easier. Exhibit A: Though far from commonplace, it's not freakishly bizarre laptop battery anymore to find a power port at your airplane seat--even in coach. Virgin America and American Airlines are among the most generous airlines in terms of supplying power ports to passengers.

But it's still way too easy to run out of juice in flight, or during the course of a long day away from a wall socket. Here are some tips for keeping your laptop running as long as possible when you're on the go.

Ditch the Peripherals, Tweak Settings

When you're on the road, you can significantly conserve battery power by dimming your laptop screen's brightness. Make sure there are no CDs or DVDs sitting in your optical drive, and don't connect any USB peripherals--all power hogs. Turn off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 3G networking (you have to do that in flight anyhow).

Also, tweak your laptop's power settings to conserve your battery dell laptop battery. For example, in Windows Vista, go to Control Panel, Power Options and select the "Power saver" setting You can adjust the "Power saver" settings, if you want, or create your own power plan.

Buy a Second Battery

Many laptops today can run off two batteries. When the juice from the primary battery runs dry, the auxiliary kicks in. In most cases, the primary battery comes with the laptop; the second is an optional purchase. For example, HP's EliteBook 6930p promises up to 24 hours of use from one charge--but only if you attach an optional, external 12-cell ultra-capacity battery pack ($189) as a secondary 4834T battery to augment the laptop's internal, primary six-cell battery (There are other requirements, too, such as the need to downgrade to Windows XP.) Keep in mind that second battery packs, sometimes also called battery slices often add bulk and weight to your laptop.

Another option: Buy a portable battery pack. I like the Duracell Powersource Mobile 100 (about $110 and up online) because it lets you power a variety of devices, such as laptops, cell phones, portable DVD players, and video cameras, using their own 2834T power cords. By comparison, some portable power rechargers require special tips or cables to recharge your gear. The Duracell Powersource can also recharge two USB devices simultaneously with your laptop.
Get to Know Battery Specs

When buying a new laptop or a second laptop battery, pay attention to the power specs. Generally speaking, you need to know how many cells the battery has. The more cells, the longer the battery can last on a charge. For example, a 12-cell battery is designed to last much longer than a six-cell battery. Alternatively, the specs might list Watt-Hour rating, or WHr. The higher the number, the longer your Latitude LS battery should last. Some computer makers, such as Apple, describe laptop batteries in terms of WHr, while others use cells.

Check for Power Ports Before You Fly

Before I book a flight, I find out the type of aircraft I'll be on. Then I jump over to Seatguru.com, which offers helpful seating configuration maps for most domestic and international airlines. The black dots on seat maps indicate the presence of in-seat power ports. Keep in mind, though, that sometimes (especially in coach) you may have to share one power port with your neighbor.

Play Your Music on a Portable Player

Playing music or videos on your Inspiron 2000 laptop is a great way to pass the time--and drain your battery. Music and audio files make frequent hits on your hard drive, which consumes battery power. If you need to work during a long flight, and yet you want to silence that crying baby in 12B, listen to music on your portable media player. That way you won't tax your laptop battery. Most airplanes today have an in-flight music system, which you can listen to even during take-off and landings (which you can't do with a portable electronic device).

Watch Videos on Your Hard Drive

Playing a video on a laptop's DVD drive eats battery power. Video playback from a hard drive, however, is less taxing. So for your next long flight, consider downloading a few movies or TV shows to your hard drive. Or convert your own DVDs into files you can play off your hard drive. As PCWorld.com blogger Rick Broida points out, you can use the popular open-source program Handbrake to rip DVDs into files for watching on a W0465 laptop or iPod/iPhone