News Bits: New Li-Ion Batteries, Thin Blu-Ray Drive from Panasonic, Touchscreen Notebooks

New Li-Ion batteries deliver 10x more life

Researchers at Stanford have developed a new version of the Li-Ion battery that could extend runtime in devices such as notebook computers up to ten times. The technology is detailed as "High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires" as published online in Nature Nanotechnology on Dec. 16. "Given the mature infrastructure behind silicon, this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly," lead researcher Yi Cui said.

Read More (nanotechwire.com)

Panasonic shipping samples of world's thinnest Blu-ray drive

Panasonic today announced it has started shipping samples of the world's thinnest 9.5mm height Blu-ray disc drives. The company first introduced a 12.7mm height Blu-ray drive in Spring 2006. The new 9.5mm drives are being shipped to PC manufacturers. The drive can read and write single- and double-layer Blu-ray discs at 2x. It also functions as a DVD burner.

Read More (AkihabaraNews.com)

MSI plans to double notebook shipments next year

MSI is planning to double its own-brand notebook shipments in 2008 while keeping its gross margins above 15%, far higher than the typical 5-6%. MSI plans to be more aggressive pushing its own-brand notebooks worldwide next year.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)

Touchscreen notebooks on the horizon?

According to a DigiTimes report, Taiwan-based panel makers are looking to combine touchscreen functions with notebook panels. Some makers are investing in expanding touch panel production capacity. Panel maker CPT showed off a 15.4-inch touch panel that had the same width and thickness of a traditional 15.4-inch panel, meaning notebooks could adopt touchscreen functionality without design changes. CMO, another panel maker, said that demand is not strong enough at current but expects to see demand rise after 2008.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)

"Universe at War: Earth Assault" reviewed

Forum member The Forerunner has done a thorough review of the PC Game Universe at War: Earth Assault. The author writes: "Universe at War: Earth Assault (will refer to it as UAW from now on) is a sci-fi real-time strategy game created by Petroglyph and published by Sega. Petroglyph created the Star Wars: Empire at War game and members of the company were actually the creators of the original Command & Conquer. (Courtesy of Wikipedia) It is the first game in the Universe at War series.

Currently it is only available for the PC but in 2008 it will also be available for the Xbox 360 system. It has been confirmed that the game will support cross-platform play through the Games for Windows LIVE service."

Read the full review in the forums

 

First of all: Chaz, I've missed you and your news Bits

The battery technology is exciting news. It's quite impressive. I guess this will be the next best thing to the so-called Betavoltaic 30 year battery...

As for the new thin Blu-Ray drives, it seems that ThinkPads using the ultrabay slims, can finally get Blu-Ray functionality.

 

It's nice to know you are liked. Thanks. There has been little to report on as of late so I had no reasonable means of making a post.

As far as the Blu-ray drives go, while I think the ultra high-res is beautiful, I still am not willing to risk several hundred dollars on an investment that may end up being a flop.

 

Wow that battery news is great! Think about having 50 hours of battery life and not even having to plug in your laptop for 2 whole days!

 

I agree Chaz. I thinnk this whole format war is ridiculous. There were some great deals over the holidays on both drives but I'm pretty happy with my upscaling DVD player. Its not HD, but its close.

 

When can we expect these new batteries?

 

HOLY ****

T___T 10, ****ing, times

10, ****ING, TIMES
It is seriously tearing my eyes.... "__"

 

Finally a superslim Blu-ray drive. Hopefully we'll see these introduced as an option on the MacBook Pro at MacWorld, although being a Matsh_ita, we'll have to see the user reports first.

 

And thats if you use it 50 hours straight, so it would last you probably about a week!

 

The battery news (30+ hours) is great! I just hope that it will not take 24 hours to get full charge

 

I hope the new batteries come out soon, and are safe. It's really promising news for the ever shrinking subnotebook phenomenon - and certainly my m1330 is thirsty for juice!

 

Sounds good.

 

when/if the new batteries do come out cpus, gpus, lcds, hdd..etc will stop their trend of doing more with less power and become hogs again.

Or laptops will just ship with smaller batteries.

Either way, don't worry about having too much battery time because it ain't gonna happen.

 

Yep. They'll just ship laptops with tiny batteries and we'll be stuck with our 2-6 hour range.

 

I know what you're saying and somewhat agree. Unfortunately, the "format war" applies to just about anything and has been there from the beginning. It definitely makes things confusing at times (especially for the regular Joe), but it does have its benefits as well - such as increased competition, which drives the companies to develop better technology faster and cheaper.

 

Didn't think about that, hahaha, and because theres always positives and negatives, I have a feeling that it may take a while to charge.

 

Any details on how in-cell touchscreens differ from active or passive digitizers in current tablets? Is this similar to the N-Trig capacitive touch on the Dell Latitude XT? Does this mean the sensor resolution will be equivalent to screen resolution? How about pressure (and perhaps angle) sensitivity? I know that's a lot of questions and for most I'll have to wait and see.

MS has been pushing touchscreen tech for a while, stating that it will be an integral part of the follow up for Vista, however the tablet market has been dismal so far, with no widespread adoption forcing prices up, which forces specs of the machines down. I love using tablets, but the extra cost does not justify the functionality for many users. The iPhone got the ball rolling even further in the mobile market, with touchscreens being available for a long time but never catching on except in PDA and business devices. With this development coming early on (as in before an OS that takes full advantage of touch technology), it isn't really reasonable to measure demand in a market which is already obviously a minority...

Other than my rant, yay on the batteries.

 

Very good news about the new Lithium Ion batteries. That is really one thing about laptops that I felt needed an improvement. Hopefully they will be around when I get my next laptop in a few years.
Tim

 

Hopefully these new batteries will be available by summer 2009 when I purchase my new laptop.

 

Exactly my thoughts.

Btw Gautam, just noticed you got a XPS M1330. I don't assume you're running Linux on it?