The Weak Link — Batteries!

Well, I have pontificated on a number of my thoughts lately, so will continue that pattern tonight.  I had a frustrating day today, mostly becuase I ran out of battery life on two different devices at the most opportune time! Let me explain my frustration. 

Mobility has a number of great and wonderful tools available right now, but they all seem to suffer from one malady — battery life.  While I do not claim to be an expert on battery tech as it exists today, how to preserve the juice in the best manner, etc., I do claim to be one of the expert few who just plain know one fact — we need more battery life!  Now before I receive a lot of negative comments about what I do or do not know, consider the fact that it really matters not what my knowledge level is, I have a real and serious problem.  I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH JUICE.

I use two primary tech and battery dependent tools in my day to day life; a cell phone (Motorola Q SmartPhone), and a Tablet PC (Lenovo X60 ThinkPad Tablet PC).  My MotoQ can make it through the day pretty well as long as I do not work a 16 hour day (which happens more than I wish it did).  My Lenovo X60 did pretty well on that with the extended battery under Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, but has most definitely taken a hit since I moved forward and made the committment to Windows Vista Ultimate.  As long as I am careful with pre-charging said devices, and do not try and push the envelope too far, I am okay.  But if I work too hard and long each day….., well……, I’m screwed (to put it bluntly).

So excuse my impatience a bit, but it is still really hard for me to understand why processors, hard drives, so on and so forth have progressed so far in the last say five years, and battery tech has not.  Who are the people who are staying awake nights worrying about this issue?  Where are all the brilliant minds of today in whom I have full confidence in solving this dilemma?  Where are the serious advances in this technology?  Uhhh — I dunno.

I am now coining the phrase, “The Mobility Battery Void” (MBV).  Am I wrong, or is battery life stopping the advancement of processors, hard drives, etc. or have we really hit a battery wall?  We keep seeing absolutely wonderful machines coming out like the Toshiba Portege R400 Tablet PC (InkShow in progress by the way), or the Lenovo X60 ThinkPad Tablet PC but they have less than stellar processors or  unwired life spans  simply because they are trying to work with the handicap of battery life.  Need more juice?  Strap the processor.  Is that the long term answer?

And while I am at it, why are we so invested in producing external, supplemental batteries when we need to focus on the improvement of existing ones?

Where are the battery advances I ask?  Somebody educate me on why this singular technology has seemed to advance so slowly?  Battery experts out there — answer this question for me!!

Signed,

Dennis Rice, sufferer of MBV!