14 DAY TRIAL // There are two classical ways to power up and use a laptop. The first and the most comfortable is to plug it into the main power grid and compute happily ever after, or until the next power outage. The second method is to draw power from the internal laptop battery and this is the most used method for the "on the move" computing. While powering a mobile computing solution from the main power grid affects and nullifies the very concept of mobility, it has the advantage of permanence as laptop batteries are not generally known for a very long life under full load conditions.
This is where a concept born some years ago come into play: the fuel cell. A recent presentation of such a fuel cell made it clearly evident that such a concept has a bright future ahead as a single fuel cell could power a laptop for up to eight hours a day for almost a full month. First functional fuel cell adapted for a laptop was presented back in 2005 as the product of a joint venture between IBM and Sanyo and it could deliver enough power for up to eight hours of continuous operation when it was coupled with a ThinkPad laptop. Another early fuel cell prototype was presented in 2006 by Matsushita, a division of Panasonic and it measured 24 cubic inches and has a nominal power output of 13W with a maximum power output of 20W, offering a laptop up to 20 hours of runtime.
The latest fuel cell prototype from UltraCell is much more smaller than previous models and it features a more powerful energy generator, being able to power a laptop for two straight days according to the manufacturing company that was cited by the site Treehuger. The only commercial available fuel cell solution comes from the Fuel Cell Store alongside with a line of pure hydrogen models too.