Refill vs recharge ... it really depends on how available the methanol is to refill the fuel cells (and you KNOW airport lounges will sell you about an hours' worth of fuel for $50!) Granted recharging takes time, but unless/until fuel cells are popular enough to have refills available ubiquitoutsly, refilling might be very expensive!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Powerbooks and Variable Timing
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Refill vs recharge ... it really depends on how available the methanol is to refill the fuel cells (and you KNOW airport lounges will sell you about an hours' worth of fuel for $50!) Granted recharging takes time, but unless/until fuel cells are popular enough to have refills available ubiquitoutsly, refilling might be very expensive!
methanol, i think, is dirt cheap. it sounds about as sophisticated as gasoline or cigarette lighter fluid. it's a natural gas derivative; at least, that's one way to make it. i think they have other ways, but the gas-based one is the most effective method of making that. they are not going to charge you 50$ for a refill. not even at the airport. of course, like everything else, you will pay an airport premium, but i bet you will be able to stock several refills in your brief case without noticeably adding to it's weight, and since about 3-4 of these should sustain you for well over a trip or two around the world by plane, i don't see why anyone would be dumb enough to buy at the airport... but yeah
Methanol is currently available in most states at a lot of gas stations. They may not be the gas station you frequent regularly but it's around. I think the stuff is currently going for around $1.10/gallon. I imagine they will package it in the little lighter fluid refill cans and there will be a cost for packaging and the because we can addition so maybe around $3/can at the normal pint can size. I imagine one can of what I described will probably get you around 30 hours of use.
really? i thought i read it could be gotten from a bunch of places, chemically, and that natural gas is one of them.
Methanol comes form corn. The fuel cells on the other hand can run on all sorts of fuel. Though the most popular most abundant and cheapest right now is Methanol.
[edit] I'm sorry I have been thinking of ethanol. You are correct methanol(wood alcohol) can be derived from many sources. Including wood, coal, and natural gas. It is the simplest form of alcohol with one carbon atom.[/edit]
How long have you had your Notebook?
I am assuming is six months or so??? If my assumption is correct, then you have to calibrate your battery .to do this you have to reboot your computer and before it comes back on hold down F6, and follow the directions!!!!
It takes about six hours so do it over night with the AC plugged in!!
gosh i hate when that happens... you go on about something, and then you find out you were ranting about something different altogether. that m can make a lot of difference huh? well you almost had me convinced; i don't much care either way, except i remembered going to some official methanol page and reading up on it for that big fuel cell thread.
i wonder if they will retrofit modules for like the powerbooks so that you can get fuel cell tech on them. that'd be cool, because i don't want to wait for these to come out to get a laptop.
I don't see why the aftermarket won't take this up and do it. I have already heard of them coming up with cell phone replacements some due out as early as January. We'll see though.
I do believe that the fuel cells will probably be able to run on ethanol also.
Oh and to go back to an earlier post. Methanol is cheap also.
I don't think the aviation companies will be glad if everyone in their plane is carrying canisters with highly explosive fuel in their briefcases... think about it... if an accident with one of those happens disaster is inevitable!
I think the good ol' lithium-polymer batteries will be used for quite some time...
-Dr. D.
The point is the stuff is so cheap and plentiful that you don't need to carry a refill bottle on board with you. Simply refill before you leave and get a new bottle when you get there. The FAA has already approved the use of these fuel cells on commercial flights.
...right. and you can't carry a cigarette lighter in your bag on an airplane? i don't know. it's gay if you can't, because it's so harmless. we are talking about <8 fluid ounces of this stuff per person, and methanol really isn't that exploosive. and unlike a lighter, these things have no method of lighting on fire. what are passengers going to do, crack their methanol refills and light them on fire with a match? even if you spilled it on your laptop circuitry, the likelihood of that setting on fire is so small. and even if that set on fire, what's the big deal? it's not like you can do any serious damage to a plane, and you certainly can't hijack a plane with a can of methanol.
seriously. we are talking ~150 gallons tops of mildly flammable liquid individually cartridged and spread across about 100 yards of plane space. and this is assuming every passenger has fuel cell refills. now, to really do any damage to the plane, you have to take a good number of people's cartridges, break them all (probably very inconvenient), and then light them on fire. i mean, come on. if one person could damage a plane with his own stash of methanol, than it would inevitably mean that he could damage himself pretty darn severely in a normal situation. i can just see that. you're sitting at home on your laptop when all of a sudden the fuel cell leaks and blows you to pieces when it shorts your circuitboard, and 18 volts jumps a wire, causing a fire. boom. you're dead. yeah, right. that's like assuming they could never sell a 20 lb computer because if you picked it up and dropped it on your head, you would have a high chance of getting a serious neck injury. i am sorry, we have been through the FAA bull already on these forums.
While I agree with your post for the most part there are a few arbitrary guesses that seem a little off base. I think the total quantity between all the passenger if they were all to carry refills would not exceed 4 - 5gallons. Also it is very likely that the FAA will not allow refills but who cares if your fuel cell runs for 4-6hours/refill.
Also the amount of fuel these thins will hold is very small and a standar refill container may be no bigger then a lighter.
Yes, it would. I was just helping out before the critics tore you apart. Mainly because 150 gallons of fuel would be more then enough to turn a plane into a flaming arrow. I didn't feel 150 gallons was a very reasonable and I felt others would nitpick your post in to meaning nothing unless that was corrected.
150 rather, yeah... naturally, but i still think even with that number, it doesn't matter. its so spread out and individually packaged and all that that to set even a gallonof it on fire at once would be incredibly impractical and require a lot of coordination. i'd honestly rather take my chances with a series of box cutter, to bring in the issue of terrorism, because i really think that's the only way, and even that far-fetched, anythng could happen with these things... could be wrong, but you'd have to be really stupid to... oh wait. i'm in america. i take it all back.
Okay sorry misquoted. I went ahead and corrected that in my previous post. 150 Gallons is more then a gallon/person on any plane but a jumbo jet (i.e. 747, L1011, DC9). Most average planes only carry around 117passengers. I do agre though that by having it distributed among small cans that it is very unlikely that it would ever be combined to be a large amount. Though if each person had a gallon. 1 Gallon is more then enough to start a pretty horrendous fire on board a plane and without a doubt at least suffucate everyone if not burn them to death. Don't forget that plastic and most clothes are very flammable not matter how much fire retardent is built into them.
oh, right, i was thinking of a 747... or an airbus.. or something.. don't they hold like 300 people, or am i way off? that was the number i had in mind. but yeah, 150 is overkill ever for that... i guess like even with refills it's about 8 ounces a person...
And after the calibration someone proposed earlier, check if there is special powermanagement support from HP for your laptopmodel. I know the batterylife of my Compaq Armada E500 goes up after I install their special powermanagement software. The standard support in Windows XP just doesn't cut it.
Hope it helps
Yeah some of the large Jumbo jets are around 300people. I do think 8ounces may still be a large refill though.
My battery life BLOWS
It's hard to believe. I love OSX. Problem was apps launched slow as heck on my iBook. When i got Jaguar it fixed that problem. But now i get a PATHETIC battery life. I mean REALLLLLY bad. As in 43 minutes or so bad. I have the most aggressive battery saving settings enabled. I don't the the HD or fan is off enough. Any ideas? It's driving me NUTS. And btw under OS9 if i let it sit, waited for the screen to dim (when it was already on lowest) and unplugged it the battery monitor would register 10hrs. plus. :-D
I'd hate to go back to OS9, but OSX is almost not worth it. I'm going to fresh install OSX 10.2, then if it's still that bad, i'll install OS 9.2 on top of it. I don't want to, but 45 minutes? i can't live with that, it's like a Dell or something....
It's hard to believe. I love OSX. Problem was apps launched slow as heck on my iBook. When i got Jaguar it fixed that problem. But now i get a PATHETIC battery life. I mean REALLLLLY bad. As in 43 minutes or so bad. I have the most aggressive battery saving settings enabled. I don't the the HD or fan is off enough. Any ideas? It's driving me NUTS. And btw under OS9 if i let it sit, waited for the screen to dim (when it was already on lowest) and unplugged it the battery monitor would register 10hrs. plus. :-D
I'd hate to go back to OS9, but OSX is almost not worth it. I'm going to fresh install OSX 10.2, then if it's still that bad, i'll install OS 9.2 on top of it. I don't want to, but 45 minutes? i can't live with that, it's like a Dell or something....