laptop battery news

Japanese tech-corporation Toshiba has already made quite a few headlines this year with the release of it’s Direct Methanol Fuel-Cell (DMFC) technology. Toshiba hasn’t stopped there, however, as they have boldly pronounced themselves as main players in the worldwide race to produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

“No confidence, no investment,” was the strong statement given by Shoshi Kawatsu, Toshiba’s general manager of the Super Charge Battery (or SCiB) division, as part of a Financial Times interview that covered the company’s battery technology and overall potential as suppliers of lithium-ion batteries for vehicles. Mr. Kawatsu stated that Toshiba’s investment of $279 million to build a second SCiB factory is a glaring sign of it’s confidence, and went on to say that he expects to sign five car companies as customers for it’s new lithium-ion laptop battery.

Toshiba first announced their arrival into the lithium-ion battery for hybrid and all-electric vehicle market last year. Their goal is to make 3 million lithium-ion battery cells a month starting in 2010, with a sales goal of $2.2 billion for their batteries by the year 2015.

Armed with $95.5 million in grant money received under Pres. Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Saft America Inc. has announced plans for construction of a lithium-ion factory in Jacksonville, FL.

Florida’s deal with Saft is the latest in a string of partnerships and investments between states and battery(laptop batteries) developers and manufacturers. The total estimated cost of this particular project is around $200 million, and it’s estimated that it will bring roughly 279 jobs to the area throughout the next six years.

“Florida is stepping onto the world stage as a major marketplace for advanced energy technologies,” said Florida Governor Charlie Crist. “We are excited about Saft establishing their lithium-ion factory in Florida, and we look forward to their being a part of Florida’s renewable energy future.”

The plan for Saft’s new facility in Jacksonville is for it to become a high-volume manufacturing plant building advanced Li-ion cells and batteries for military hybrid vehicles, aviation, smart grid support, broadband back-up power and energy storage for renewable energy.

“We extend our thanks to the Governor’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, Jacksonville Economic Development Commission, the Cornerstone Regional Development Partnership and Enterprise Florida for their dedication to bringing this project to fruition. Through this partnership between Saft, the city of Jacksonville, and the state of Florida, we are going to build an advanced factory of the future and bring many high-technology jobs to Jacksonville,” said Thomas Alcide, president of Saft America Inc.

Construction on the facility is scheduled to commence within the next few months and is slated to be completed before the end of 2010.

Modern laptops come in all shapes and sizes and their perpetually growing popularity is a testament to their convenience and ever-increasing power. Desktop PCs look like a thing of the past and many homes have multiple laptops used by each family member. New laptops are released virtually every week and here is a quick run-down of the top 5 laptops of 2009. Each laptop on the list is excellent for its own reasons, so the order of the list is unimportant.

Acer Aspire 5732
The Acer brand is always associated with low cost, high power equipment and this laptop is no exception. It features a powerful dual-core Intel processor, a massive 4GB of RAM and a slightly less overwhelming 250GB hard drive. It has a high resolution 15.6 inch screen with a built in webcam and as you would expect there is also built in Wi-Fi connectivity for mobile internet surfing. Windows Vista 7 Home Premium 64bit is installed and ready to use, which means that this Acer has the most modern operating system in the world at its disposal and all at an incredibly low price point.

Lenovo Thinkpad W700DS
This laptop has two screens. That is reason enough to get it onto the list, especially since the main display is a generous 17 inches across the diagonal and the 10 inch secondary screen is touch sensitive. What is more it features a quad core Intel processor, 400GB of hard drive space and 4GB of RAM. This will set you back thousands, but its novelty and power make it an astonishing laptop.

Compaq CQ60
Comparable in many ways to the Acer in terms of specifications, this Compaq befits from a dedicated NVIDIA graphics card with an HDMI output. That makes it perfect for hooking up to your HD TV or projector for some big screen fun. It may come with Windows Vista preinstalled, but you can upgrade to Windows 7 for free, which many will do instantly.

Apple Macbook Pro
Whilst you will be paying a premium for the Apple brand, you also get one of the most delightfully designed pieces of technology of 2009. You can specify the hardware within the Macbook to your own needs, but you will want to opt for the dual core processor and a good helping of RAM to get the most out of the platform over the coming years.

Sony Vaio Z51XG
If you want style but still want a Windows-based laptop then any one of the Sony Vaio range will appeal. This iteration comes with Windows 7 Professional preinstalled and features 4GB of RAM and a 400GB hard drive, making it an ideal machine for the discerning businessman.

If you have picked up a new laptop this year then there are tons of great accessories which can make your life much easier, or just embellish the look and feel of your product. Since many mobile broadband providers now give away free laptops to new customers, the accessories market can only continue to grow. Laptop bags are still the number one functional accessory, but they can still be fun. There are many stylish bags for lads and ladies who lug their laptop with them every day.

One of the main benefits of the recently released Windows 7 is the reported 10%-20% improvement in battery life brought about by the new program from Microsoft. Still though, even with this reduction in power consumption brought about by Windows 7, any other methods of extending the life of your notebook’s battery are always welcome.

We recently featured an easy to use battery monitoring application called BattCursor for Windows Vista. BattCursor keeps the user well aware of the status of your battery, while also showcasing battery saving features such as automatically dimming the computer display or turning off Aero. BattCursor is also compatible with the new Windows 7, and will be helpful in improving upon the battery saving benefits already allowed by newest version of Windows.

Another way to boost the battery life of notebooks featuring both Windows 7 and Windows Vista is the use of a small tray utility called Aerofoil. Aerofoil will automatically disable the Windows Aero Glass interface and optionally switch Windows Power Plans, Windows Sidebar and sound off when your notebook is running on it’s battery.

Your laptop can have all the top of the line capabilities in the world; however if the battery can’t keep up with these capabilities, they essentially become useless.

Laptopmag recently posted a review of Hewlett Packard’s HP Pavilion dm3t series. HP boasts that the laptop, which starts at the fairly reasonable price of $650, is “powered by Intel’s ultra-low-voltage, dual-core processors, and with up to 10 hours of battery life, these PCs have the stamina to go all day.” Laptopmag went ahead and put the Pavilion dm3t’s battery to the test, and although it didn’t quite reach the 10 hour mark, it did come impressively close.

Battery Life of HP Pavilion dm3t:

Because the ULV CPU inside the dm3t sips power, the six-cell battery lasted an impressive 9 hours and 7 minutes on the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi). This endurance is significantly better than the Toshiba T135’s 7:23, but the ASUS UL30A is still the champ in this category with a run time of 9:55. Nevertheless, you’ll be able to use dm3t for most—if not all—of the day before needing to hunt for an outlet.

One of the most crucial aspects of purchasing a laptop is knowing just how long you’ll be able to use the machine in between charges. Do your research, and make sure your laptop can stay powered up long enough to complete the tasks and activities you purchased it for.

Sometimes even when you’re contributing to a worthy cause…accidents just end up happening.

The need to take any and every measure to keep batteries from ending up in landfills has been well documented by The Battery Times; which is why news such as this is disheartening.

According to several major news outlets, firefighters were battling a blaze Saturday night at a Toxco Waste Management Facility in southeastern British Columbia. The large fire broke out at about 4 p.m. Saturday at the battery recycling center near Trail, B.C., a city about 600 kilometres east of Vancouver.

The latest reports had five fire companies fighting the stubborn blaze, which had spread late Saturday night to the company’s recycling facilities. Toxco’s plant recycles materials from lithium batteries and produces zinc and other metals from alkaline batteries. Toxco is North America’s leading battery recycler and has been recycling single-charge and rechargeable lithium batteries used in electronics devices and industrial applications since 1992.

There are recalls, and then there are RECALLS. The latest recall by Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone manufacturer, falls under the latter as it’s being reported that the total number of battery chargers being recalled could be as high as 14 million.

The principle reason for this particular recall has to do with the plastic outer casing on the battery chargers, which have been separating and coming loose; therefore exposing the internal components of the charger and posing the risk of an electric shock.

Nokia is acting fast to remedy the issue and already has a website set up to help customers whose battery chargers may be affected. The quickest way to know if you have a charger that needs to be exchanged(aside from already receiving electric jolts when going to charge your phone) is to check your Nokia’s charger to see if it’s got a model number of AC-3U, AC-3E, or AC-4U. If it’s one of these, head to chargerexchange.nokia.com and enter the details in the form provided. Nokia will handle the rest and get a replacement charger shipped off to you.

While battery technology overall has remained relatively stagnant over the past few years, several recent breakthroughs have many filled with anticipation of new batteries that are cleaner, quicker, and more powerful than the batteries currently available on the market.

The latest in potential breakthroughs comes from Scottsdale, AZ; where the U.S. Department of Energy-funded company Fluidic Energy is working toward development of a metal-air battery that relies on ionic liquids as its electrolyte. As noted by Seth Kaufman on MIT Tech Review, Fluidic Energy is aiming to build a Metal-Air Ionic Liquid battery that has up to 11 times the energy density of the top lithium-ion technologies for less than one-third the cost.

The key, according to the founder of Fluidic Energy and professor of materials science at Arizona State University Cody Friesen, is in the density of the ionic liquids that would power these revolutionary batteries. “These liquids have electrochemical stability windows of up to five volts, so it allows you to go to much more energy-dense metals than zinc,” says Friesen.

“They’re wonder fluids. They’re remarkable. If you look at these liquids in a bottle, they look like water, except they’re viscous. They’re not volatile, they don’t evaporate, they’re physically stable and they conduct electricity fairly well.” – John Wilkes, an ionic liquids expert who heads the academy’s chemistry department

So what does this all mean? Well if the development of ionic batteries goes as planned, we could potentially see an increase in battery life by up to 6 times. How does 24 hours of uninterrupted use of a laptop sound?

As with any new technology, the optimism of those who are developing it remains bridled. “I’m not claiming we have it yet, but if we do succeed, it really does change the way we think about storage,” says Friesen. It’s about taking everything we’ve done over the last four years and leveraging that work into a battery that looks and feels just like a lithium battery, but has energy densities far beyond that.”

Every once in a while, laptop batteries malfunction and explode. It’s a rare occurrence;one that should in no way cause a ’shark attack’ type of reaction. With that being said, it’s good to know that the risk of this happening does exist and to always pay attention to how your machine is running(odd sounds? abnormal temperature?).

In a post on Engadget today, the lastest instance was told of a MacBook Pro whose battery went just a bit haywire, joined by some farly interesting photographic evidence to back it up.-

“The story behind this one is as follows: a 17-inch (non-unibody) MBP owner was using his machine on a desk (thankfully), when suddenly an odd noise began to increase in volume; following that, the entire machine “jumped up” slightly and turned off, and this battery is to blame. Oh, and if this all-too-commonplace occurrence happens to you next, let’s hope you aren’t actually using your laptop on your, um, lap.” -Engadget-

While this isn’t the first time this has occurred on a MacBook Pro, the cases of exploding laptop batteries are definitely few and far between. Aside from paying attention to how your computer is running, also be sure that you’re purchasing quality batteries from china shopokey.

If you opt for the realization of a MacBook Pro without the cost of pro, then you’ll love, recently updated its MacBook from Apple.

The MacBook has announced through updates to the iMac last month, and mini-line is at $ 999 price – $ 200 less than the 13-in. coated aluminum MacBook Pro, but it replaces the model, the latest model of Apple notebooks in comparison level offers an architecture to date, a hard drive more robust and higher quality video.

In a convertible tablet, the LifeBook up on the hinge allows the display and fold flat, but a small tab that you are able, something that has nothing to do with tx2z block, too. Tx2z Like the LifeBook has a 12.1-inch screen, but it uses a capacitive multi-touch digitizer from Wacom.

Stay calm about the technology of lithium batteries, consist of the electric car manufacturers continue to emphasize that the  battery is the most damage. But is that really true? Only if it is not, and some producers hedging their paris anyway. Nissan, for example, on a two-pronged approach: building a plant that both hybrid and all electric tools (plug-in) for vehicles of style.

The company aims to reduce the world to a level of packaging by 10 percent in 2010. Simultaneously, it is also among the contents of the buffer and sustainable packaging solutions, from corrugated cardboard 40 percent, and announced that about 75 percent of the packaging components are recyclable, in 2012. Otherwise, Dell will install lighting pillows. This will be the need of heavy cardboard. Also lead to the use of 100 percent recycled high density polyethylene (HDPE) Thermo-formed cushions are made from waste materials, including milk bottles and detergent bottles.

If any of these methods also result in the maintenance of price reductions in the last computer from Dell to wait, because Dell Studio 1737 is. According to company estimates, 33 million bottles of milk are used for recycling computers and portable tanks.

Nexergy Turner states that “Li-ion spreads other (non-mobile and mobile) applications. Every contract entered won. Add it takes five to six years for lithium-ion a passport other chemicals and notes the ongoing transition to Li -ion power tool bag. The Li-ion tools generate a high premium price and may be too much for some consumers. “DEWALT 36V tools more power than if the same tool is on the wall,” Turner said.

The scheme provides a more accurate weather forecasts. Meteorologists can predict the weather, just because a small area divided (1 km). Current weather forecasts are more localized, because the objectives of the areas of measurement, at least 10 kilometers in size. Currently, the Sequoia has the same power to about 2 million laptops Lenovo  battery. With the rapid development leave of computer technology, we are confident that IBM one days to other places that the U.S. government to use innovative technologies,

The cost is the main reason people buy computers and laptops refurbished. The prices are often lower than the average computer system is currently sold. Of course, the rebate amount is not really relevant if you are looking exactly the same product happen. Most teams are the most common products compared with the original manufacturers suggested retail price for the product when it was renovated first published. Consequently, the agreements may not always be the best.

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