The portable power problem

Well, my kids gave me an iPod for Christmas. (I have downloaded 61 songs, two podcasts, one audio book, three tv shows, and some text files.) With my cell phone, my iPod and my digital camera, I could possibly be described as a techno minimalist. Since there is a whole array of portable electronic devices such as laptops, notebooks, Bluetooths (or is plural Blueteeth?) Blackberrys (Blackberries?), and Iphones, that I don’t own, or even know precisely what they do, I am not anything like a junkie. It’s a good thing.

Do you know how many connectors it takes to run the few that I have? I would hate to try keeping any more little black wires than I have now untangled and together with their devices. And don’t try to kid me; "wireless" does not mean that a device comes without any.

But worse than that, since all of these devices are portable, they all have batteries that have to be charged using one or more of those little black wires. But putting the connectors aside, if I couldn’t spell, I would think that "battery" is a four-letter word. It seems to me that batteries are the weak link in the universe.

Think of it—my iPod could conceivably hold enough music to play non-stop for more than a week, which seems over the top considering I would have to charge it’s battery several times for it to play every piece. Suddenly, the thing is not so portable after all. You can’t get too far away from its home computer or its cradle.

My daughter’s laptop does amazing things, but it needs to charge for two hours so she can use it for one. That seems upside down to me.

And cell phones are more dysfunctional than that. Well actually they are incredible, but their batteries are weak (pun). They discharge even when you don’t use them. Did cell phone engineers say to each other, "I know how we can make a portable phone, and if we try really hard, maybe we can make a battery that will stay charged for a whole day."? If I were one of those engineers, I would be pushing for a month, minimum.

And if you think that digital cameras are going to be carefree, you are wrong. You have to worry about their batteries. Don’t expect to pick up your camera after a week and find that it will make pictures. It might not even turn on. What good is a pocket-sized camera on vacation if you have to bring along a backpack full of batteries to run it?

Electronics engineers try to get around the battery problem by installing bells, beeps, lights and bars to warn you that your batteries are about to die, but before you can hook up the respirator, they’re dead.

Father Butterbean has a fairly new battery-powered drill with a lifetime warranty. Well actually he is like most guys which means he has three of them. All of that is true except for one thing. He does have three drills and they all have at least one battery, and they all have warranties, but do any of them actually have power? Not enough to wind your watch.

They need new batteries. He has called every tool supplier in the Mountain West, checked E-bay and been to the Battery Store. (Yes, there is actually a store called the Battery Store. What does that tell you?) It seems that the battery for the drill with the lifetime warranty is out of print, so to speak. They don’t make it anymore. Granted, they wouldn’t need to make a new one if the old one did the job. But does anyone tell you this on your first foray into the world of portable power? The industry is probably afraid that you will figure out that batteries are really just a very poor solution to the power problem.

Does anyone besides me want to step on the Energizer Bunny? If someone ever finds a solution for the weak link of the universe and invents a battery with some real lasting power, I hope I am related to him/her. Can you imagine? Move over Bill Gates.

Tonight I called my daughter and said, "I’m writing about batteries this week. Do you have any good battery stories?" She started to tell me one, but her phone died.