Neah Power gives charge to laptops

Anyone who has spent much time with a laptop or notebook computer knows intimately the frustrations of short battery life.
Whereas cellphones, personal digital assistants and cameras have made continuous progress in recent years — with batteries getting smaller, lighter and more long-lived — PCs seem stuck in recharger hell. My Sony Vaio gets about an hour and a half of continuous use from a charge. My older IBM ThinkPad gets around two hours, but it doesn't have the Vaio's power-sucking DVD drive. My Apple iBook does much better, around five hours a charge, although it shortens considerably if I'm watching videos.
It's almost as though we are gluttons for punishment. Notebooks are the fastest-growing segment of PC sales, at 30 million units last year. By 2004, 60 million Wi-Fi-capable notebooks will be in use, Intel projects. Notebooks are taking over the enterprise and mobile professional markets.
Salvation from recharger hell may be on the way — from a pioneering Bothell company called Neah Power Systems. Possessing strong tech bloodlines and financial backing from venture companies and Intel, Neah is on track to make portable PCs wireless — and cordless.
I say "cordless" because 80 percent of the time I'm running a notebook off an outlet. I'm either recharging the battery in use, charging a spare or getting work done that requires more than a couple of hours of running time.
Neah promises to make battery panic go away through use of its unique fuel-cell technology. Here's what the company foresees: eight-plus hours on a fuel cell that weighs a third as much as a conventional lithium-ion battery (remember when lithium-ion was considered the weight breakthrough?). And the fuel cell will go in the same bay as the regular battery.
The last point is significant because traditional fuel-cell technology isn't quite refined enough to fit in a regular battery slot. So you get ugly "growths" on a portable device with a bolt-on cell. Neah Power's technology is more compact and does away with another fuel-cell concern: the byproduct of water vapor.
Conventional fuel cells produce moisture. Not a problem in an automobile, say. But you don't want water around sophisticated microchip gear.
The Neah Power cell is sealed, drawing oxygen from a separate chamber and capturing water and carbon dioxide internally.

The secret to Neah Power's compactness lies in its fuel-cell innovation. The cell contains porous silicon substrata that pack a lot of electrochemical activity into very small spaces. The honeycomb design is intended to be more efficient as well as safer than conventional fuel cells.
So far Neah Power is making all the right corporate moves. It recently brought in as chief executive David Dorheim, whose credits include the DustBuster line at Black & Decker and managerial positions in GE's battery division. Neah's board also added Global Business Network's Peter Schwartz and former RealNetworks executive Len Jordan. Its chairman is Dan Rosen, a seasoned deal maker who played key roles at AT&T and Microsoft.
Now all Neah Power has to do is produce. Founded in 1999, it hopes to offer a demonstration product this year and ship by 2005.
The company could face some speed bumps. Lithium-ion technology could improve, although that's a long shot. Experts such as Brian Barnett, director of advanced battery technology at TIAX, are on record as saying lithium-ion is pretty much maxed out.
And pricing hasn't been set. The company says a fuel cell will cost about the equivalent of a blister pack of standard batteries — $4 to $5. Fuel cells will have to be cheap to offer a meaningful alternative.
Finally, I wish Neah Power's cells could be recharged. The technology may emerge to do so, company executives say. But I hate the thought of a "green" technology contributing to landfills.
For now, more power to Neah Power. All road warriors will appreciate any promise of recharger redemption.

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