News New screens promise 40-hour notebooks

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/12/01/new-screens-promise-40-hour-notebooks/1

Pixel Qi has announced a new range of low-power LCD displays that could boost laptop battery life up to ten times - meaning 40 hours between charges.

 

Looks very exciting indeed. I'll be getting one of these for my EeePc then

 

arent the olpc screens a bit like e-ink, they only take power when something changes.. all you need for something like an ultramobile though forweb browsing and whatnot

 

Well, this won't work. Do a simple test - turn off your EEE's screen and see how long it will go on battery. You might hit 8-9 hours or so, but no longer. Today's LED-backlit screens are pretty good power-savers as they are.
They are probably developing some kind of bi-stable TFT screens (same as so called "e-ink") which use less energy than "normal" screens, but they still need some when the picture changes (and on PC screens something changes pretty much all the time) and for the backlight (which actually uses around 75% of all the dosplay's power). So unless they ship those laptops with a 60AH gel battery, just adding a power-saving screen won't give you much more battery life.

Oh, and one more thing - bi-stable screens are (for now) monochromatic.

 

40 hour laptop would never happen, as soon as they got extra battery life from something theyd use it to power something else to gain performance improvements.

 

Fair point but components are getting more efficient all the time, the more powerful processors of today use less energy than processors of the previous generation. In time I believe 40 hours will happen but it's a matter of when.

My laptop today is certainly much more powerful than than my laptop of 5 years ago yet I have about 4 times the battery life.

 

Why are they not promising smaller batteries? And isn't it about time that laptop manufacturers stop cheating and put the powerbrick in the main unit?

Anyway, yay for development! I'm wondering how these screens will perform though...

 

Which would actually be fine for most of what I use a netbook for, and which I'd happily go for if it gave me enough endurance to last, say, a London to LA plane flight.

 

Ye im thinking more about that theyll just put in more powerful and therefore power hungry components it might be achieveable at some point but not just yet.

 

this. screens simply do not draw a high enough percentage of the laptop's power for a claim like this to be true. unless the screen is a hybrid LCD/solar panel that charges the battery while it runs.

 

One Laptop Per Child... Books anyone? ...they don't even need power.

 

Have you considered what it takes to print store, ship and keep current enough books to educate one African country? All the African countries? Africa and India? Add in all the other remote and poor places and suddenly the idea of a low powered laptop makes sense. Not to mention, with basic GPRS net access, the kid's have access to online resources and lectures they might never see. Parents suddenly have access to weather, soil and agriculture data to help them plant better. They have access to market rates so they know where to sell the produce and how much to sell it for; often cutting out a middle man. They get access to medical information, information on green tech. Suddenly they know that is s larger world out there, with options for them to better their lives.

While I love books, I recognize that they have limitations when it comes to educating 1/2 the world's population that live in poverty. Never before has so much information been available to those with net access. Simply having that access levels the playing field to a degree not seen in a long times. OLPC has the potential to be a force multiplier.

 

Furthermore ironjohn, there are the skills gained through the use of the computer. Not to mention the empowerment that being connected to the information community brings.

 

Who then comes and cuts their throats...

Oh, maybe my view of Africa is a bit biassed by the tendancy to civil wars down there...

Xir