14 DAY TRIAL // The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) announced its plans to revise its standard for laptop battery production, Macworld writes. The organization is globally recognized as the standards-setting body on everything that relates to electrics and electronics. This action is under way to make sure that the reliability of batteries used in laptop computers is safeguarded.
IEEE calls this revision the "Livium" family of battery standards, and will be created within the IEEE Standards Association Corporate Program. The standard being revised is known as IEEE 1625 - "IEEE Standard for Rechargeable Batteries for Portable Computing" - approved in 2004. It offers guidelines for battery design and manufacture, and provides ways that companies can evaluate and qualify such batteries, including verifying their quality and reliability, according to Macworld.
The revision project is due in 18 months, which is a long time, considering the problems with laptop batteries that occured last year. Such problems have been mostly reported with batteries made by Sony, as millions have been recalled by a number of laptop computer makers, including Dell and Apple, because of a chance that those batteries may overheat.
Edward Rashba, New Technical Programs manager at the IEEE-SA, said in a statement that Apple and other companies "have indicated strong interest to participate" in the revision to IEEE 1625. The group will meet bi-monthly in the U.S. and Asia to complete the work, starting later this month at Intel's Santa Clara, Calif. offices, Macworld writes.
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