When will we get 6-8 hour MB/MBP battery life?

[Emrtr4]

I am just wondering when (timeframe) we will start seeing REAL battery life of about 6-8 hours?
Given that I am going to college in 2008 I would love to see laptops from apple with that type of battery life arive around then, but does anyone know how much future processors (after Santa Rosa) GPus, Hardrives, and displays will help?

Also, any chance by 2008 I will have an OLED 15.4 inch MBP screen with a blu-ray writer?

 

[j5uh]

as soon as we get a more power efficient chip and flash drives instead of regular hard drives.

 

[LeviG]

well when apple do smaller led displays, use an ulv dual core cpu and use ssd drives then you will most likely get 6-8 hours.

Panasonic/sony claim upto and beyond 8 hours for their smaller screened laptops which use the ulv cpu's

 

[Emrtr4]

How low are these ULV cores?

I know Intels future Centrio (i believe its called Pyrien or something, the successor to Santa Rosa) will have 29v or something of that nature, it is supposidly about 6v better than Santa Rosa, but from what I understand Santa Rosa won't improve battery life because of processor performance (more because of NAND flash, ect)

 

[Father Jack]

Quite a way off ............ flash ram drives instead of normal hard drives, very expensive

FJ

 

[lamina]

What about better battery technology?

I think that is the true barrier in laptops and mobile media devices. To digress for a minute, the 'true video iPod' is definitely ready, I'm sure that the only thing holding it back is battery life.

Combined with flash memory, LED-backlit screens, and maybe eventually the technology that watches use to power themselves (can't remember what it's called), one day we will have 10 hour+ battery life.

Flash-based drives are very expensive for now, but just like DVD-R's were $30 each when they first came out, the prices will fall dramatically. And I can't friggin wait till that happens. The idea of a spinning disk platters and moving heads inside my laptop really freaks me out, even with Apple's sudden motion sensor technology being as good as it is. It's a disaster waiting to happen, which is why I back everything up once per week.

 

[cmccarten]

aside from the advancements made with lithium ion batteries, the core technology for batteries hasn't really changed in around 50 years. All of the advertisements about improved regular batteries are more or less a sham - there have only been tiny improvements in charge over the entire time that batteries have existed.
So I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a new battery technology. It is all of the peripherals that the battery supports that have to be improved to have more efficient power consumption.

 

[danny_w]

Apple could certainly do it with an ultraportable and ulv processor. My Thinkpad X40 gets 6 hours, and the X60 reportedly gets over 8 hours with the extended battery (but the whole thing is still only 3.2 pounds). It all depends on where you put your emphasis. Apple has never really been into this market, and I don't see them getting into it for a while yet.

 

[suneohair]

There will be a breakthrough in battery tech in the next few years.

Plus cpus, lcds, ram, hd's, etc will all be lower power in the coming years.

If we get better battery tech and lower power devices we could be looking at 10-12 hours and behind in the next 5 yrs.

 

[CanadaRAM]

When you're willing to carry a machine that is 1 - 2 lbs heavier.

 

[Vidd]

I thought the ULV Core (2?) Duos already exist and so unless Apple opts for that ultra-portable that whas become infamous, then I doubt we'll see it in a Mac in the near future.
LED screens will probably be inevitable but I would expect better batteries before more efficient hardware.

Flash has to be the most exciting possibility and with the prices dropping and caspacities rising, it looks as if home computer use terribly too far off.

 

[elppa]

technology that watches use to power themselves (can't remember what it's called)QUOTE]

Kinetic?

 

[siurpeeman]

i think we can very much expect 6 hours (at least) when led backlit displays come out. the power savings on that alone would be enough to last the macbook a couple extra hours.

 

[Sesshi]

My LED-screened G11 goes for 7-8 hours with a 100Gb HDD and a 2.5lb all-up weight including the DVD-RW (although it is a Core Solo), so it's definitely doable with a bigger battery in a 5lb notebook.

However since Apple haven't even caught up with the Sony portables of last year... I'm not sure Apple will be blazing that trail.

 

[72930]

In the future, I'm sure there will be wireless power...further down the line it will be power-everywhere, like wimax, but with electricity...

 

[CaptainHaddock]

I think it'll be a while. Lower-power processors and screens will mostly allow Apple to put even more cool technology and horsepower in a laptop while keeping battery life similar to what it is now.

A new generation of battery technology is what we really need. One possibility would be high-capacity capacitors, which might allow not only for much higher energy density, but also near-instantaneous re-charging.

 

[Erasmus]

In the future, I'm sure there will be wireless power...further down the line it will be power-everywhere, like wimax, but with electricity...

Yes. Sometime after the invention of general cancer vaccines and cures, and the invention of very cheap nuclear fusion power. But before antimatter power cells and wormhole power cords

In terms of the near future, I doubt whether Apple will ever be notable for very long battery lives. It just doesn't seem to be their style to stick a kilogram of battery into a notebook.

 

[danny_w]

Yes. Sometime after the invention of general cancer vaccines and cures, and the invention of very cheap nuclear fusion power. But before antimatter power cells and wormhole power cords

In terms of the near future, I doubt whether Apple will ever be notable for very long battery lives. It just doesn't seem to be their style to stick a kilogram of battery into a notebook.

In the meantime, there are plenty of competitors that get 8 or more hours without being too heavy to carry. Several ultraportables do it and are less than 4 pounds!

 

[72930]

Yes. Sometime after the invention of general cancer vaccines and cures, and the invention of very cheap nuclear fusion power. But before antimatter power cells and wormhole power cords

There is already prototype wireless power for around 3ft, and I think that as laptop wattage decreases and this technology advances, we could see wireless power start to become an everyday thing...

 

[Erasmus]

Clarification:

I doubt whether Apple will release either a very heavy portable with a huge battery, or a super small, super low power portable. I just don't think it's Apple's style. Apple seems to like having the most powerful laptop processors available in their computers. I mean, you can't get a new Macbook with less than 1.86 Ghz. The speed only goes up to 2.33! I doubt whether Apple will use the ultra low power, low speed CPUs that you would need to run a notebook for 8-10 hours.

I think the far more likely occurrence is to hope that the 7th or 8th gen iPod can function somewhat as a computer. Like much more than the iPhone.

Either that, or hydrogen fuel cells get small and powerful enough to be used in an Apple notebook. (Emphasis on Apple notebook) Or some other technology, such as maybe storing electrons inside of C-60 buckyballs, which I heard somewhere.

Oh, and in terms of transmitting wireless power:
I realise that it can be done. I believe the first person to to it was Mr. Tesla, who obviously is long, long dead. If someone wanted to do it, it could easily be done.

The point is that no-one in the position to do it would want to do it. How do you charge someone for electricity, when they can just rock up, and use it like an unencrypted wireless broadband connection? The only way that this is commercially feasible, is firstly if electricity is at least close enough to free so as to allow say the government to st up a system, and be able to afford to run it.

The second point is electricity needs to be able to be created in huge amounts, as I'm sure you understand, it is hardly efficient to simply broadcast high intensity radiation in every direction.

A third point is that this random broadcasting would cause any pieces of metal to have a voltage induced in them, causing current to flow, which could either electrocute someone, or simply heat the metal up.

The fourth point is that this large amount of radiation could quite easily end up increasing cancer rates by a huge amount.

OK, I think I'm done.

EDIT: OK, I'm not quite done. Along with having fast processors in their notebooks, they also seem to like bright screens, fast RAM, and fast Hard Disks, all which use lots of power.