Originally Posted by
SEAFFLYER
I think I remember them saying at a gold lunch last year that they were counting on batteries getting better and better in the future...
I don't put much stock in that hope. I think David Pogue expresses it about as well as I could here (from his
technology wish list posted in August of 2007):
The long-life battery. In the last ten years, cameras have gone from 1 megapixel to 12. Processors have gone from 300 megahertz to 3 gigahertz. Music players have gone from holding 20 songs to 20,000.
But batteries? Stagnant. Just sitting there, giving laptops the same old three-hour life they’ve had forever. When I grow up, I’m going to start a battery-technology company.
Now, obviously battery technology has improved (or else today's higher-power computers wouldn't get the same three-hour llife as yesteryear's 300 MHz computers), and we've progressed from NiCad to LiIon and other technologies, but the factor of improvement is markedly less than the other examples he gave (not to mention that future increases in battery capacity, just like past ones, are likely to be equally matched by increases in power consumption).
I love reading Pogue, but even though Pogue's a geek, he's a lay geek and honestly isn't any more knowledgeable about the science behind the technology than I or any other technophile. Still, I think his layperson treatment of this subject is about as valid a summary as you'll find...