| A large number of laptop users, especially businessmen, tourists and students, can hardly imagine their life without the laptop. Since it is portable, it can be taken on board an aircraft to view films or send/receive e-mails from co-workers or business partners. Nevertheless, the laptops cannot operate day and night. From time to time the laptop battery requires re-charging. Barely has any user thought roughly the first laptop batteries and their power.
In fact, the history of laptop batteries is an exciting one. They have already come along way, but they still have a long way to go to perfection. When we think of laptop batteries, many of us consider the rechargeable ones that are deployed nowadays. Yet, a few decades ago AA batteries were widely used in laptops. It took a large number of AA batteries to run a laptop. Moreover, it could not run for long. Some laptop users remember the heavy-weight lead acid based batteries that did not only last long, but also made a laptop extremely heavy-weight.
Since then the manufacture of laptop batteries has been modified. Lighter nickel cadmium batteries (NiCd) replaced lead acid based ones. Nevertheless, these batteries were not used a lot, since nickel metal hydride batteries (also called NiMH) were introduced. They lasted much longer and were lighter. Their downside was the so-called memory effect they had. If the battery had not discharged to the full, it remembered it and produced less energy than it should do.
A great step towards advancement in laptop batteries manufacture was made when lithium ion batteries (LiON) appeared on the IT market. These batteries are much lighter than other laptop batteries and do not produce any memory effect. They are deployed in technically advanced laptops.
Though LiON laptop batteries run for several hours non-stop, they need re-charging. Since more and more people purchase laptops annually, the demand for longer lasting batteries is speedily growing. Certainly, there will be further improvements until batteries that do not require re-charging are made. No matter what you deploy your laptop for, you know that you require a battery with a long life. You need to know the battery will not go dead when you need your portable pc most of all. |
