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Batteries lack juice now, but will power up someday

A colorful sunset is taking shape as Jim Evans gazes out the window of an airport waiting area. But the view isn't all that's pinning the investment banker against the pane--his cellphone's power cord tethers him to a plug at his feet. It's nearing the end of a long day's travel from South Carolina to Philadelphia and back, and Evans, 46, is still talking deals. "I've been on the phone a lot today," he says during a brief pause. "The battery's completely dead."

The same scene unfolds daily across the land as travelers scramble for juice to power laptops, cellphones, and personal organizers. Batteries have lagged far behind fast-changing computer technology--laptop users list battery life as their No. 1 complaint, according to researchers at International Data Corp. Sure, today's rechargeables pack two to three times the punch they did in the 1970s; that era's nickel cadmium batteries would power today's notebook for less than an hour. But the progress is pitiful compared with the doubling of computing power every 18 months. Instead of the ever ready bunny, battery technology lumbers like a tortoise.

Yet demand is giving rise to new investment and research into batteries, once a sleepy backwater of industry. NiCds were the only rechargeables for decades. Today, new technology emerges every couple of years. This year, battery makers are selling exotic materials like lithium polymer and enhanced titanium. Still, they offer only percentage gains over last decade's lithium ion and 40-year-old alkaline batteries. Today's two-hour notebook might stretch another 30 minutes before recharging; a digital camera might capture 80 photos instead of 60.

"We'd love to give you a laptop that's 2 pounds lighter and runs for 10 hours," says Lorena Kubera, a Compaq executive. "But there are no great advances on the horizon that are going to make that possible."

Many batteries are a collection, or "battery," of individual cells. Each is filled with volatile and often toxic substances that generate electricity through chemical reaction. Often, promising innovations are abandoned because prototypes prove dangerous. Batteries, as described in one industry paper, can suffer a "sudden, automatic, and rapid disassembly." In English, that means: "They can explode."

Some battery makers bristle at comparisons with the rapid-fire computer industry. Batteries have been around for a couple hundred years and even rechargeables have existed for a half century. It's a mature technology being forced to accommodate brash chip making and software coding. "We're experimenting with all the known elements," says Joseph Carcone of Sanyo Energy USA. "But we're limited to working with what can be found on Earth."

There are also environmental concerns. Since the mid-1980s, manufacturers have removed 95 percent of the poisonous mercury in power cells. The changes were expensive and also cost power--mercury helped boost electrical output. Only recently have some batteries regained their former strength.

Any progress in portable power often is obscured by brighter screens, faster chips, and graphics-laden software. Today's typical notebook runs two or three hours on a charge, even less than some models managed in the early 1990s. "As quickly as batteries become more energy efficient, they keep hanging more dingles and dangles on them," says industry consultant Barry Huret.

There's just no way for batteries to keep up. Many hand-held computers now last a couple of weeks on a pair of small AAA cells. That will end when wireless Internet service becomes the norm. A fully charged notebook already struggles to power radio modems, CD-ROM drives, "or God-forbid, the DVD drives that are coming," says Ritch Russ of Toshiba's battery unit. "A DVD player is just going to suck up power."

Curbing power. To help close the gap, semiconductor makers are purposely slowing their chips to save power. Software built into many notebooks already curbs processing power, or dims the screen to increase the life of a battery charge. Intel and competitor Advanced Micro Devices have microprocessors designed to automatically cut their speed, and power consumption, when a laptop is unplugged. Chip maker Transmeta is moving processing from the chip to software to reduce its power drain.

Other products offer long-running battery life, though at a premium in price and weight. Some of Toshiba's line of ultraportables, weighing less than 4 pounds, will run nine hours without recharging. But you have to carry a $459, 2-pound battery pack--making them not so ultraportable.

Many frequent travelers do something similar by packing a second, charged battery. Extra batteries? "Oh, I've got batteries," says Tim Gallagher, as he spreads several on the floor of a Chicago O'Hare terminal. But all are dead, forcing a two-terminal search for an available wall plug.

Users find themselves rationing cellphone calls while saving the computer games, DVD movies, and MP3 music for AC power. "I also make sure the laptop is plugged in while sitting in meetings," says Howard Green, 39, a Veterans Health Administration executive in Kansas City, who has the luxury of few long flights.

The next great wave of portable power may owe less to the wired traveler and more to the needs of national security. Fuel cells, which make electricity by mixing oxygen and hydrogen, have been around since the mid-1800s, and are used to power the space shuttle. A big challenge will be constructing safe plumbing for the volatile mixture. It was, after all, an exploding fuel cell that crippled Apollo 13 in a near- fatal trip around the moon in 1970.

Transportation officials and automakers have financed research into fuel cells for cars and buses in the name of creating cheap, clean fuels whose emissions are little more than water vapor. And battery- starved Army units are driving research that could make fuel cells available for portable devices but that's at least three years, and possibly a decade, away.

After grunts reported their batteries ran low during the Persian Gulf War, Pentagon brass showed up with research money, says Illinois Institute of Technology researcher Eugene Smotkin. Consumer companies weren't far behind, with Motorola joining scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Their design envisions cheap and light fuel in the form of methanol, a type of alcohol that contains hydrogen, that can be carried in pocket vials. A Los Alamos scientist says a portable fuel cell could be ready in three to five years, one small enough to serve as a battery recharger on a civilian plane or covert military mission.

"Special forces commanders say they have a tough choice now," says Shimson Gottesfeld, a Los Alamos fuel cells researcher. "They are forced to choose between taking food and water, or more batteries."

And traveling techies think they have problems.