Pixel Qi conjuring up black magic technology for 40-hour laptops
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 29th 2008 3:40PM
posted Nov 29th 2008 3:40PM
Sure, you can go out and get yourself a laptop right now that'll go 12.5-hours strong, but what if your portable computer could nearly outlast your Aigo A215? While L's mythical quad core lappie came close in theory, Mary Lou Jepsen's (the former CTO at OLPC) startup is hoping to eventually create a machine that can last between 20 and 40-hours between charges. Pixel Qi is being pretty closelipped right now (and understandably so) about what exactly it has going on, but we get the idea the secret sauce is in a highly efficient display that will require far less power than traditional LCDs. The best part? We could see one of these longevous notebooks in the pipeline as early as 2H 2009, so we'd probably start stocking up on Red Bull right about now.
Or they should make a laptop that runs on Red Bull, if this doesn't work out and all that stock was for nothing.
vodka is better XD
In Soviet Russia, computer runs you!
just wondering...how much does it take to recharge???
test
You fail.
Good day sir!
My guess it is just a 50Lbs battery...
Shazam 40 hour run time,,,
But the notebook itself will be under 1 lb.!!
Obama Magic
Rather have Obama magic than Bush a** raping for the last 8 years.
Obama LOL....ROFL
Wow, great job bashing Bush without naming why he has a** raped us... Typical dumbass American.
OLED?
More likely... e-ink?
NICE, this would help as I can only get 6hr's out of my laptop which is useless, which means I have to carry a spear charger everywhere, so this would help
Professional
Fusion Fuzo
I get about 45 minutes on my laptops battery..so... yours is like an eternity by comparison :(
man, I LOVE spear chargers!
Not only can you power your laptop off them, but should you get stuck in the wilderness you can hunt with them too!
And I find them GREAT when people are mugging me for my laptop.
BEST INVENTION EVER.
I see what you did, lol
I need to practice spelling on websites
Professional
Fusion Fuzo
@Mr. Professional,
You need to work on a *lot* of different things when you're online. The foremost of which is not being a completely ignorant, annoying asshole.
@Richard:
Is that with the battery that came with the laptop?
See if you can buy a battery with more cells..
My laptop used to last me 45 minutes with the stock 4-cell battery. With a 6-cell battery, it lasts a good 2.5 hours.
Wow a forty hour laptop.....and I didnt win a fucking thing!
You're so predictable, of course it a Low Rank
When will they realize we don't need to go 40 hours on a single battery charge? It would be nice if they shrunk the battery size.
Speak for yourself. I'd love a unit that runs for 40 hours without needing a charge.
That's what your girlfriend said...
This P Qi'd my interest
It's not about needing 40 hour its about wanting 40 hours.
I only get 1 hour and 20 minutes but then I don't take it anywhere.
I'd rather have 40 Hours than 6.
damn id take an hour and a half right now.. i get about 50 min. damn i need a new battery
my VAIO's battery will go about 2.5 Hours...
: (
"Pixel Qi"... what's next? Voxel tantra?
Qi... The Chinese interpretation of The Force.
Also a witty gameshow hosted by Stephen Fry.
nuclear power sources
make sure you dont use it on your lap....
Count me in for one of these, I would love a laptop that can last 40-hours.
Really?!
figures, they announce this kind of thing right after i put in an order for an eee1000HA.
Is 2H a new trade show I haven't heard of?
/sacrasm
My Vostro gets 2-3 hours from full charge. Depends what im doing really. On ubuntu just typing in class i get 3 easily but if im on windows doing photoshop, im lucky to get 2. Im highly interested to see how this is achieved. Also, this should theoretically take about 30 hours to charge if it uses current generation battery technology and it will degrade VERY quickly.
Within 3-5 years, this should be much closer to being a possibility... A laptop by then will have:
- Intel's 22nm highly-integrated Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge architecture. I imagine the mobile ultra-low-voltage version will be incredibly efficient with a built-in GPU and single-chip chipset.
- maturing OLED technology should allow small-size ultra-low power high resolution displays
- ~22nm low power DDR4 SDRAM
- ~22nm NAND flash SSD drives with advanced power management
- next-generation Lithium Ion battery technology
This should easily make for 10-12+ hour laptops for normal people and perhaps even 40-hour laptops in extreme cases...
Unfortunately fail to take into account that fact that 3 to 5 years from now your laptop may have the option of comming with Microsoft Windows WhoKnows Ultimate Edition and as such it will require all of that just eek out a full 3 hours.
.... and by then you *might* get 40 hours out of an x86 probably not
ARM is the future already integrated already running circles around x86 power to watt ratio soon to be multicore and already outselling all the other processors meaning that it has a stable code infrastructure to support quick porting of applications
of course you won't be able to get this awesome hardware if you are so closed minded that you *have* to use Windows when real linux like debian (not the dumbed down hard to use kind like on the netbooks atm) is all anybody could want in most every case
A company is conjuring black magic technology and the first thing they wanna do with this is make longer battery life for laptops? Why not world domination or at least teleporting, but...batteries?
They need to secure the funds for world domination first, hence this beauty.
There's also the issue of not having the power to run all sorts of spiffy high tech devices we all love and want. Nothing pisses me off more than a really neat device that I can only run for an hour. The iPhone is a fantastic example. I'm thrilled someone is researching better battery technology!
No they're just using an Arm processor which is used in phones,PDAs,and hand held game systems.
Nobody has mentioned Dell's Presision line that can go 17hrs with the thin battery attached to the bottom. 21 cells of power!
HP, which crushes Dell on all levels, happens to have a 24 hour laptop... haha beat that!
By the way I dont work for HP.
Dell is crap, EVERY Dell owner I know has had at least one break, if not more. In contrast, I have recommended several HP desktops and laptops and they all loved them.
I will harness the power to rule the world.
Has anyone seen this?
"Battery Life Breakthrough Could Increase Capacity by 800%"
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/battery-life-breakthrough.php
more market offerings with suggested retail prices, less talk
They just want to suck you into 40-hour Cave Story marathons, those conniving bastards.
50 hours is very possible if you don't use conventional X86 processors and Windows.
The tandy M100 from 1984 ran 20 hours on 4 AAs it likely would run for days on lithium batteries
They could use an arm processor or an embedded PPC and run linux with a very light WM.
Intel may like to claim their atom cpu only uses 3watt but most Arm processors only use a few hundred milliwatts.
They've updated their blog: http://pixelqi.com/blog1/2009/02/02/product-freeze/
The product is described as a 10-inch display with insane power-savings and fully saturated color fidelity. The display also has an e-paper grayscale state with video refresh rates. It's basically the XO-1 laptop's screen beefed up.