Prompt's TechBlog

State-of-the-art wireless laptops are sleek, sexy and shackle free for a couple of hours, but lose a lot of that footloose appeal once the battery starts bleating and they plead to be tethered to a mains supply. As mobile electronics become ever more mainstream, the thirst for a more effective mobile power source than current lithium-ion batteries is increasing. Berkeley startup H2Volt thinks it has found the answer - a workable dry fuel cell lasting ten times longer than the batteries it hopes to replace.
This is not a revolutionary idea, with a number of other companies (IBM, Motorola, NEC, Medis Technologies) already making tentative stabs at developing workable compact fuel cells, but H2Volt has the backing of both Siemens and the US Navy, and looks likely to see this concept through to production lines. One director claims laptops will soon last for days not hours and phones will stay charged for weeks, while a recent study from research firm NanoMarkets estimates the fuel cell market will be worth $1.6 billion by 2010.
Of course there has to be a catch, otherwise laptop loving Toshiba would have launched its own version of the technology back in 2004, as promised. The most likely reasons for hesitancy are size and expense. How will the latest breed of developers perfect cells light and powerful enough to appeal to microelectronics manufacturers? And will they find a catalyst as effective but less pricey than platinum?