The Greening of Laptop Battery Life
We all want better laptop battery life, and greener is better, too. It may be that longer and greener come together in the same new technology, and it just might be here now. Boston Power recently launched a new battery that promises to be not only greener and longer-lasting but also safer and faster.
Longer Battery Life
Current laptop batteries generally only last for a certain number of charge cycles, roughly 250 in most cases. Boston Power claims its new battery is capable of over 1,000 charge cycles. In short, the new technology should quadruple laptop battery life. It also promises to charge in roughly a fourth of the time it takes to charge older laptop batteries to full capacity.
How’s it Greener?
A longer-lasting battery is automatically greener. When you don’t need to replace your laptop battery as often, you don’t need to toss out old batteries as often either. Ideally, fewer batteries should need to be manufactured, replaced, used, and ending up in landfills with the new technology.
Additional Safety Features
We’ve all heard about the recalls that have happened with laptop batteries in recent years. Most dangerous incidents with batteries are caused by overheating, and the new batteries claim to reduce this risk by having an improved way to monitor temperature. They are designed to detect a wrong voltage and compensate accordingly within four to six minutes. Current batteries can take roughly twenty minutes to identify an incorrect voltage, potentially becoming dangerously hot in the meantime.
What Does It Mean for Me?
The new battery technology isn’t available to the average consumer quite yet, but assuming all is successful with its limited launch in 2009, everyone should see the benefits of this step forward in laptop battery technology soon. It’s even possible that use of the technology will expand to other areas – maybe even cars and trucks. Longer life and a bit of greening would be great for every one of the batteries we use, after all.
