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BTW: Whatever happened to those fuel cell proposals promising to replace laptop batteries altogether? I remember pictures of laptops running on working prototyp

BTW: Whatever happened to those fuel cell proposals promising to replace laptop batteries altogether? I remember pictures of laptops running on working prototypes claiming to achieve 10 hours run time on a single "charge" 10 years ago. EDIT: Actually that's 17 years ago: https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/whatever-happened-to-mobile-fuel-cells-718317 https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/whatever-happen...

dale_glass 6y ago
Linus Tech Tips looked at a fuel cell USB supply a few years ago. It sucked horribly, and barely produced any power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-yLqwGS2dA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-yLqwGS2dA Besides that, we can have 10 hours from a battery quite easily right now. If you need more, there are external batteries powerful enough to power a laptop over USB-PD. And after that you just charge it from any power outlet. It's a known technology, very mature, and doesn't run into any trouble at airports. Hydrogen also either requires constantly buying new cartridges, or acquiring special hardware to fill them. It's just late to the market. At this point the batteries are actually very good and a lot more convenient. There's probably some use case in which one can't have enough batteries, set up a solar panel, or use a generator, but it's got to be a niche.
- mastax 6y ago
  That reminds me of mikeselectricstuff's teardown of a Hydrogen fuel cell power bank: https://youtu.be/y48wCuC3KcA https://youtu.be/y48wCuC3KcA An extremely well engineered piece of technology that may have been selling at a loss at $150. Only 26wh at up to 500ma, can't recharge it at home, have to drive to specific stores to pay £6 to swap the cartridge. Just completely impractical.
  - dale_glass 6y ago
    The one LTT was looking at did have a charger, which seems to have cost somewhere around $420. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vidpQ8jHlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vidpQ8jHlI But now you're paying a good chunk of cash... for what exactly? The system is bigger than a battery, a lot more expensive, a lot harder to charge, much less powerful, and a lot more complex and delicate.
briffle 6y ago
The marketing people moved to fisker and EV's: https://www.pcmag.com/news/fisker-battery-promises-500-mile-ev-range-1-minute-charging https://www.pcmag.com/news/fisker-battery-promises-500-mile-... Apparently, after coverage in EVERY blog, news article, etc, they dropped it last year.

dale_glass 6y ago

Linus Tech Tips looked at a fuel cell USB supply a few years ago. It sucked horribly, and barely produced any power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-yLqwGS2dA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-yLqwGS2dA Besides that, we can have 10 hours from a battery quite easily right now. If you need more, there are external batteries powerful enough to power a laptop over USB-PD. And after that you just charge it from any power outlet. It's a known technology, very mature, and doesn't run into any trouble at airports. Hydrogen also either requires constantly buying new cartridges, or acquiring special hardware to fill them. It's just late to the market. At this point the batteries are actually very good and a lot more convenient. There's probably some use case in which one can't have enough batteries, set up a solar panel, or use a generator, but it's got to be a niche.

mastax 6y ago
That reminds me of mikeselectricstuff's teardown of a Hydrogen fuel cell power bank: https://youtu.be/y48wCuC3KcA https://youtu.be/y48wCuC3KcA An extremely well engineered piece of technology that may have been selling at a loss at $150. Only 26wh at up to 500ma, can't recharge it at home, have to drive to specific stores to pay £6 to swap the cartridge. Just completely impractical.
- dale_glass 6y ago
  The one LTT was looking at did have a charger, which seems to have cost somewhere around $420. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vidpQ8jHlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vidpQ8jHlI But now you're paying a good chunk of cash... for what exactly? The system is bigger than a battery, a lot more expensive, a lot harder to charge, much less powerful, and a lot more complex and delicate.

briffle 6y ago

The marketing people moved to fisker and EV's: https://www.pcmag.com/news/fisker-battery-promises-500-mile-ev-range-1-minute-charging https://www.pcmag.com/news/fisker-battery-promises-500-mile-... Apparently, after coverage in EVERY blog, news article, etc, they dropped it last year.