| In the new millennium the laptop has become number one device extensively deployed by students, business people, travellers etc. It is portable and can be taken on board a ship to watch movies or send/receive e-mails from co-workers or business partners. Still, the laptops cannot function day and night. Sometimes its battery needs re-charging. Scarcely has any user thought, when the first laptop battery was produced and what it was like.
In fact, the laptop battery has an exciting history. They have been updated and upgraded a lot of times, but they still have a long way to go before they are perfect. When we think about laptop batteries, many of us think about the rechargeable ones that are used at present. Nonetheless, several decades ago AA batteries were widely deployed in laptops. It took a great many AA batteries to run a laptop. Moreover, it could not run for long. Some people remember the heavy lead acid based batteries that did not only last long, but also made a laptop very heavy-weight.
The production of laptop batteries has been updated and upgraded since then. Lead acid based batteries were substituted by lighter nickel cadmium batteries (NiCd). Nevertheless, these batteries were not deployed a lot, as there appeared nickel metal hydride batteries (also known as NiMH). They lasted much longer and were lighter. Their major drawback was that they had the so-called memory defect. If not discharged to the full, the NiMH battery remembered it and its output was lower.
When lithium ion batteries (LiON) appeared on the IT market, regular users witnessed a great advancement in laptop batteries manufacture. These batteries are light and have no memory effect. They are deployed in laptops of the next generation.
Even though LiON laptop batteries run non-stop for several hours, they need re-charging. Because more and more people buy laptops every year, the demand for longer lasting batteries is ever raising. There will certainly be innovations until batteries that do not require to be re-charged are produced. Regardless of the purpose you turn on your portable computer for, you know that you require a battery with a longer life. You have to know that you can count on the battery when you need your laptop most of all. |