8-hour battery

It's always been my contention that laptop computers are a pain in the arse until battery life is improved. Given how compromised the performance is whilst running on battery, it's a necessity to have the thing plugged in (with an external hard drive also plugged in) if you want to do anything serious like audio or video.

So it's nice to see that new solutions are round the corner. I hate Li-ion batteries, they're so flaky (still) and unforgiving. For example, last night my phone was on charge from about 8pm until 7pm this morning, and it was still flashing that it wasn't fully charged. Yet at the weekend, it decided it was fully charged after a couple of hours. What gives? I don't want to have to think about the care and welfare of my batteries, thanks. I've got more important things on my mind.

Still, there's a long time to go. These new zinc-plastic batteries are good for 500 charge-cycles, apparently, which only works out at 16 months or so.