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July 13, 2009

Assault with batteries

Exaggerated claims for laptop battery life are nothing new, but now they're hitting the courts, thanks to a new class-action suit

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Intel has been spending gazillions building chips that suck less and less juice, then crowing that its chips last longer than AMD's, according to something called the MobileMark 2007 benchmark. AMD claims the MobileMark 2007 benchmark doesn't reflect how actual humans use actual computers and wants the industry to adopt new ways to measure battery technology (which sucks, by the way, if I haven't made that clear).

Rob Enderle, a longtime industry analyst who doesn't mince words, puts it thusly:

Everyone in the industry knows this benchmark is wildly optimistic and that the actual battery life you'll get is often less than half what MobileMark suggests. This is because MobileMark measures battery life much like you might measure gas mileage if you started the car, put it in neutral and coasted down a long hill.

Or, less colorfully but more literally, the New York Times' Ashlee Vance reports:

Patrick Moorhead, a vice president for marketing at A.M.D., said the parameters for this test include having the screen at just 20 percent brightness, Wi-Fi turned off and no music, video, games or Web pages running. More or less, the test turns a computer into a dimly lit clock, then sees how long it can run.

And thus we come to the lawsuit, which is really just another front in the long-running war between Intel and AMD (and, if successful, yet another attorney economic stimulus package). That laptop battery claims are lampoonish is a given; how much consumers have been harmed by that may be up a jury to decide, if the class action is ultimately approved.

If the suit resulted in batteries that actually lasted as long as vendors claimed they did, I'd jump in with both feet. Somehow I doubt that's gonna happen. Meanwhile, PC vendors continue to generate generously optimistic claims about how long their machines will last.

Right now, for example, I've got a Acer Timeline AS3810T charging up on my desk. It's a sweet-looking, dare I say MacBook Air-like, Intel-based ultrathin that claims to deliver 8 to 9 hours of battery life, thanks to -- you guessed it -- the MobileMark 2007 benchmark.

If I can lug this sucker around for 8 hours doing what I normally do before I have to start hunting for an AC outlet, I will eat my hat, washed down with a tall frosty beer. Heck, give me 6 hours and I'd be happy.

I'll let you know how that goes and, possibly, how my hat tastes.

Have you ever had a laptop battery that lasted as long as it was supposed to? Post your accounts here or e-mail me direct: cringe@infoworld.com.

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MaxDaemon 13-Jul-09 11:18am
1 reply

The Seattle Airport's beautiful, new (2 or 3 years old) departure lounge has giant plate glass windows, floor to ceiling. It has large airy spaces, little intimate tables spread around the area, nice small laptop sized work/eat tables all along the 150 foot long window overlooking the runway.

It's got Starbucks, Ivars and other big hitters so far as food and beverages.

It's an awesome space to sit.

It has one outlet. ONE OUTLET. Hidden back by the service entrance.

ONE OUTLET. Did I make that clear?

Good thing I have a five hour battery, eh?

Seafrog 14-Jul-09 11:53am
Remember when the Seattle Airport had carrels with four, FOUR, outlets for business travelers. Those got ripped out about ten years ago. LAX removed most of the outlets in the Alaska Airlines terminals about five years ago to force use of two sponsored kiosks which each have two outlets. I have wondered what thinking is behind this trend.
ewelch 13-Jul-09 11:39am
2 replies
Might as well sue car manufacturers for their claims for gas mileage too. Here again, it seems Apple at least leads the way by not going with the lowest bidder for their battery supplier. Of course, they had to design their own.
gunner@gulftel.com 13-Jul-09 2:36pm
Much like Tektronics used to make their own SCREWS to "save money." Luckily, Apple has decided batteries are SO dependable they won't allow an end user to even replace them....
fushigi 14-Jul-09 4:53am
1 reply
FYI In the US, car makers make no claims about fuel economy. The mileage estimates come from the EPA. And at least the EPA has revised their testing methodology in an attempt (successful or not) to make it more real-world.
Wretched 20-Jul-09 6:09pm
I dont think they actually test them. Its just an "educated" guess based on engineering specs and has nothing to do with RL.
Marck 13-Jul-09 11:49am
I hate current laptop technology, the battery is only part of my issue with them. What I'd like to see is a full sized keyboard with a DVD Drive and Wireless technology built into it. The monitor would be detachable which would allow for upgrades and substitutions. If the Power Supply were also separate this would allow it to act as a small UPS allowing other devices to use it's outlets. When I'm forced to use a laptop I treat the battery only as a UPS, which it then does a great job.
gecooley 13-Jul-09 12:23pm

There is (theoretically) hope on the horizon.
Stanford (search: stanford silicon nanwire battery) claims "Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery" (on Stanford's site)

Additionally, if these geniuses could combine their technologies, there's yet another claim (search: charge battery in 10 seconds).

"Ultra-High-Power Lithium-Ion Batteries" (on MIT's site)

Here is the nuisance: these articles have been around for at least 2 years. WHERE ARE MY BATTERIES!? I have an electric car. This would be AWESOME! Even if they were half-right, I could go a thousand miles on a single charge.

Moreover, there's a battery maker called AltairNano - that supposedly has a battery in production. SELL TO CONSUMERS!
Please!

The harddrive manufacturers have done amazing things with harddrives... Where have the battery manufacturers been - for the last 15 years? Electric Wheelchairs! Cordless shavers! Cellphones (my cell phone's battery barely lasts 36 hours). Wireless keyboards and mice! Who knows? little bitty electric coolers or heaters for drinks (much like the rubber boot folks put around their soda-bottles today)... There are literally millions of uses, some of which hasn't even been considered because the tech isn't available.

OregonJim 13-Jul-09 12:44pm
3 replies
Beta batteries. Use a radioactive element called Strontium-90 which emits very fast electrons called "beta particles". There is technology being developed to collect these particles, which are really electrons, and use them to produce electricity. The beauty of this is that when the Strontium decays away to nothing, you have a non-toxic easily-recycled item. Producing the Strontium-90 of course requires nuclear tech, which in my opinion is a great idea. The problem so far has been getting a meaningful amount of power out of the battery. And public misperceptions about it, too.
Gray_Hair 13-Jul-09 2:04pm
Public misperceptions!?! Just what is misperceived??? You want us to walk around carrying radioactive isotope batteries!?? What misguided claptrap! The shielding necessary to make me less uneasy ( and comfortable won't happen) about carrying around strontium-90 would double the weight of my laptop. In a word, FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
rcprimak 13-Jul-09 10:40pm
@OregonJim--

Who told you that Strontium-90 completely decays? And that it decays into non-toxic elements? I have a College Degree in Chemistry, and I can tell you for certain that neither statement is true! And as for capturing "fast-electrons" -- this is physically impossible and will remain so.

It seems that every time the price of gas goes up, we get rehashes of the "60 mpg carburetor". And now that battery life is an issue, we get the rehash of the old "radioactive battery" nonsense. Read Snopes.com a few times and you will find dozens of these fake claims exposed.

OldTechie 15-Jul-09 7:01am
Public misperceptions - nonsense, it is public ignorance as indicated in this suggestion. 90Sr has a half-life of 28+ years! You'd still have 25% remaining radioactivity even after 57 years! If you do a little reading, I don't think you'll want to carry this around, have it circulating in the environment, or deal with the costs of reprocessing. Indeed, this is the oft-ignored issue with nuclear power plants -- some of the products (like some plutonium isotopes) have half-lives in the thousands of years, and many not only give off highly penetrating gamma rays, but also are chemically reactive. A little knowledge goes a long way in forming educated opinions.
DanFromPA 13-Jul-09 12:53pm
1 reply
While we're waiting for beta batteries, nanowire batteries, and ultramegacapacitors, I might also suggest the fuel cell option. Some laptops are being designed with fuel cells built in; others are making outboard power supplies or chargers. The advantage is not so much increased capacity per "charge" but the ability instantly to recharge, with fuel that one carries separately. The airlines are going to have to go along with the transport of fuel for such things before air travel can be improved this way -- that could be the big problem. At least one company is emerging to support this approach: Polyfuel, which is reportedly demonstrating (or about to) a Lenovo T40 prototype fueled by Methanol, and good for 10 hours (using what standard they don't say.) Outboard chargers for cell phones are also emerging.
rcprimak 13-Jul-09 10:42pm
1 reply
@DanFromPA--

Closer to reality than OregonJim, but still not practical. Give it five years, and maybe the outboard fuel cells will be developed. But airlines will still regard these devices and their fuel as bombs, so it's still not a practical solution.

DanFromPA 14-Jul-09 9:22am
1 reply
Not so distant. See http://blog.fuelcellstore.com/?cat=9 for a brief description of a product from Medis that includes the claim that it's fully approved for carrying on to commercial flights.
rcprimak 16-Jul-09 2:41pm
Good to know. Still impractical for most laptops.
tcapun 13-Jul-09 2:58pm
As you have said, batteries suck.

The question is, would you have even bought a laptop, if the promo material said "do anything you want on it, anywhere in the world, for 1 hour and 22 minutes every day for 1 year"?

I know I could get more life out of mine...

If it wasn't running windows XP because background processes heat up the ram and processors and that heat ain't from the room.

If it didn't frequently check for updates on all the miscellaneous addon software.

If Microsoft's packages were self sufficient instead of having every useful piece of help somewhere on the internet.

If the wireless didn't broadcast when I wasn't sending or receiving.

If the screen wasn't backlit with a flat bulb so big it is always warm.

If it really used the 4 gigs of ram I have instead of writing to a cache all the time. I, for one, am simply amazed that the damn thing works at all.
John the Econ 14-Jul-09 4:01am
Another example of the price we pay for "code bloat". I still hang on to a 10-year-old Dell laptop with Windows98, because I can actually get coast-to-coast on a single charge.
fushigi 14-Jul-09 5:06am
1 reply
Cringe, have you considered tweaking your travel PC? 1. Get a netbook with a 9 cell battery like the MSI Wind U123-003. 2. Replace the HD with an SSD like the OCZ Vertex. That should lower power consumption a little while providing a speed boost. 3. Spend back some of the netbook's saved weight and carry a supplemental battery along the lines of this: http://www2.xpalpower.com/us/products/xp18000/ The advantage is the ability to charge other devices and move from internal to external battery on the netbook without a reboot or suspend/resume cycle. Disclosure: Other than having some OCZ RAM in one of my PCs and considering a Wind for future purchase I've no vested interest in the products or companies mentioned.
rcprimak 14-Jul-09 7:34am
SSDs are fine until you begin to fill them up, or begin to read and write to them repeatedly. Then they get very slow and fail frequently, according to the Infoworld Test Center. And it isn't the Hard Drive which uses up most of the power and shortens battery life. It's the display, the graphics, and the CPU. Atom and related processors help with this, but at the cost of reducing performance on productivity applications.
ned4spd8874 14-Jul-09 5:16am
I agree that batteries suck. They never last very long. I have a HP ZD7000 that barely gets an hour and a half on battery. Even my new HP only goes a couple hours before it's dead. And that one is running Windows 7 in the energy saving mode.
philc 18-Jul-09 4:14pm
I'm glad my little HP 1035NR netbook gets a bit better than it's advertised 2-1/4 hours. I got 2:45 with the screen on full, browsing the web the whole time. Suits me for a 2.25lb machine. The only real complaint is that this model, which is the best by far in the line, with a 1024x600 screen, is apparently no longer available, and was almost impossible to find unless you knew exactly what to ask for. Who cares about designer red with flowers when in comes with a super narrow screen and cost $200 more.
Wretched 20-Jul-09 6:13pm
No question batteries suck. But why is this *Intel's fault? Because they have deep pockets and the class-action law firms see big profits.

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