Re: Smart Battery is a flop

[Don Perley <perley@cadence.com>]

At 12:34 PM 10/3/96 +0200, Arto.Kiiskinen@fike.nce.nokia.com wrote:

>What do you think about the new smart battery technology proposed by Intel and 
>Duracell?
>

I've seen various items about battery management chips over the years...
I probably missed that particular article you saw.

> The end user would not want to know that my battery has 
>45,3 minutes time left. Rather, the user would like the money spent in the 
>intelligent charger and battery to be used to make the battery larger,
>that is capacity-wise. 

You might not be interested in whether you have 45.3 vs 45.5 minutes, but
it would sure be handy to know 2 minutes vs 2 seconds.  Would you be more
interested in having the chip if it meant you could go through more charge
cycles before replacement?


>Especially as it seems likely that Li-Ion battery chemistry is going to
improve 
>greatly in the next few years. But am I wrong??

If charge management is done with an on-battery chip, then it is more likely
that you can use new types of batteries that didn't exist when your computer
was made.



-Don Perley

perley@cadence.com