As always, there is only one solution to the problem: MacGyver. He's dealt with this problem before, and on quite a larger scale. See the details of the episode here:

http://macgyver.wikia.com/wiki/Trumbo's_World

I'm actually stunned that no one thought of this earlier!

Come on, list a more prosperous Western European country then. Here, let me help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Deployed_HSDPA_networks#N

The Netherlands, with 3 carriers launching HSDPA networks in 2006, there's 100% coverage. This was tested succesfully by OPTA (Dutch telecom regulatory body - they tested this because carriers that bought a UMTS license promised to have 100% coverage at some time).

But then I just read that in the US T-Mobile started in one certain urban area just 5 days ago - that's pretty impressive too! ;-)

Battery life may not have improved very much (sounds logical, batteries have been around for quite some time, revolutions are not to be expected so much anymore), but 3G-chip energy consumption has probably improved drastically in the past year or 2, since this technology is new enough to allow for considerable improvement. Also the size of the installment will have been reduced, meaning it can be fitted more easily into an already crowded space.

So yes, I think Apple did need the time to do it right, and I think that may have been a good decision. Also, 3G coverage in the US was limited a year ago - the US mobile market is not as mature as the markets in Europe or some parts of Asia. Since the iPhone's major audience was the US market anyway, it was good enough.

I would go for something more like this:

King Arthur: "Look you stupid b'stard, you've got no arms left!"
Black Bot: "Yes I have!"
King Arthur: "Look!"
Black Bot: "Just a mesh wound." *kick*

What I don't understand: why talk about 'green' data centers, post an image of a data center, and not use the original image that contains the 'green' bit?

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/attachment/21514.wss?fileId=ATTACH_FILE2&fileName=_MG_9056gr4.jpg

Or are ya scared IBM finds out you're stealing their images without putting a nice reference on it? ;-)

Mike: point is, without capacity information you really just don't know what the capacity is, so you kinda have to make assumptions. Your assumption is that they can make any kind in any form of capacity, and my assumption is that the technology isn't by far mature enough to do that, otherwise they would have gone for the much larger consumermarket from the beginning instead of just targeting the industrial (more specialised and in some areas less interested in weight issues) market.

Oh, and since when is "american" a race? ;-)

Hung: maybe it's not the same, but see my reasoning up here; I really doubt this product is even close to ready for the consumer market.

And uhm... maybe my comment was douchebaggery, but calling it falsely premised nationalism is interesting; why would I do that and not make it obvious where I'm from? And your guess was completely wrong. Funny, but wrong. :)

Simon, Eric: I'm not exactly stupid, I understand that there will be evolutions. But the quote from the article is "Oh pretty please Toshiba, with sugar, won't you make a laptop version?", and to me that sounds like they want a version of _this_ battery in laptop design, not of some future evolution. I'm arguing you might not want that.

But then rickane58 probably does want to walk around with 2 kg's of extra weight to his laptop, no problem at all, if I read the sarcasm level of his post correctly, so I must be wrong in my assumption.

And Rynth, Diogo: I bet the current voltages aren't completely correct for current laptops. But since they didn't put any info on the capacity of the battery here, I would assume the 2.4 V battery is not powerful enough to power a laptop. So I simply took the one closest to whatever would be good enough, and that it doesn't fit exactly, well, isn't that why Engadget is asking for a laptop version?

Damn, sometimes I feel like one has to explain everything here. I guess I forgot this is an american site...

You want to see this in a laptop? I would think 2.4 Volts is a bit too weak for a laptop, so you'd want the 24 Volts version. That means a weight of 2000 grams. Now that's 2 kilograms, and for metric-illiterates here that means 4.41 lbs. Are you sure you want this?

... and while writing this, someone fixed that already. :)

Waah, we probably have a completely different idea on what the word "trendy" means. ;) And uhm, that picture neatly screws up the layout of the whole site. ;)