Notebook Manufacturers Push Battery Life Limits

As more business people bring their work along on local or overseas trips, the need for a notebook that lasts for a long time is essential. And as manufacturers are working hard to provide users with notebooks that can last up to 18 hours, HP has apparently set the benchmark by releasing a notebook that can last for a day.

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According to HP, its new Elitebook 6930p can come with an optional ultra-capacity battery that is able to deliver up to 24 hours of battery runtime. This is because the notebook uses components such as solid-state drives (SSD) that provide up to a seven percent increase in battery life compared to traditional hard drives. There are also proprietary LED displays, called Illumi-Lite, which are said to boost battery run time by up to four hours compared to traditional LCD displays.

HP’s Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Notebook Global Business Unit, Ted Clark said, “All-day computing has been the holy grail of notebook computing. With the HP EliteBook 6930p, customers no longer have to worry about their notebook battery running out before their work day is over.”

While HP is the first company to produce a notebook with a 24-hour battery life, it is not the only company pouring money on its R&D department to provide users with the best battery life possible.

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Last month, Dell unveiled a Latitude notebook that is claimed to have a battery life of up to 19 hours. The E6400 uses a 64GB solid-state drive, Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator, and a nine-cell battery instead of the normal six-cell. It also offers ControlPoint software, which allows users to manage battery power, network and connectivity configurations and system security settings on the fly.

Sony is also offering its users with an extended battery pack that will extend the operating time of their Vaio notebook up to 18 hours. The VGPBPX11 costs $369 (as of September 15) and is available online.

And perhaps other companies will utilise the research done by Stanford researchers, extending the battery life of its products by up to 10 times. ‘A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travellers,’ says the report.

According to a Stanford Report entitled “Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery“, Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to produce ’10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion batteries.’

In the report, Yi Cui, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering said that this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly.

The study states that the electrical storage capacity of a Li-ion battery is limited by how much lithium can be held in the battery’s anode, which is typically made of carbon. Silicon has a much higher capacity than carbon, but also has a drawback.

 “Silicon placed in a battery swells as it absorbs positively charged lithium atoms during charging, then shrinks during use as the lithium is drawn out of the silicon. This expand/shrink cycle typically causes the silicon (often in the form of particles or a thin film) to pulverize, which degrades the performance of the battery.”

The new batteries produced by Cui will use silicon nanowires that will inflate four times its original size as they soak up lithium, but will not fracture, extending battery life.

If battery manufacturers utilise this new technology, it will mean longer battery lives for just about any device. Soon enough, we may have notebooks, music players, cameras, and mobile phones that will last for days, even months on end.