Funny. Just today Ebook Engineer and I were discussing the battery life of the OLPC XO laptop, which I’m happily using to read e-books. Now get this.
CNet is reporting that Stanford University researchers have “found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium ion batteries—used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones—as much as 10 times more charge.
“This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours.”
Here’s the abstract, and here’s the full text of the research paper in Nature.
My immediate thought is, “If the technology works out, could it give new life to LCDs—and help the OLPC XO laptop, which has much higher contrast with backlighting is in full or partial use? There’s more to e-book tech than E Ink. (Via Ubergizmo.)
Other hardware news: Windows XP Asus Eee coming in Q1 2008. (Ubergizmo) and Hanlin V9 Early Review and Photos (MobileRead).
