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NeoSolar, the company that produces the Wibrain UMPC is working with MTI Micro to develop a UMPC that would be powered not by a standard 3 or 6 cell battery, but by a DMFC (Direct Methanol Fuel Cell).

DMFCs are fuel cells which produce power by harnessing a chemical reaction between methanol, water and air. Replenishable by just adding more methanol, DMFCs are very green, producing only electricity and carbon dioxide and would not require recharging from an external power source as typical UMPC batteries do.

Several companies, including Toshiba, have been experimenting with DMFC powered laptops and phones over the last couple of years, but none of them have made it past the proof of concept phase.

This is MTI Micro’s third agreement with a major consumer electronics company. The first was with Samsung and involved fuel cells for mobile phones. The second is with an unnamed major player in the Japanese digital photography world for a fuel-cell powered digital camera.

As UMPCs struggle to find ways to differentiate themselves from competitors, this seems like a clever, out of the box solution by NeoSolar. After all, how much of an advantage would unlimited battery life be? Just add water…

(Source: PC World)

Zealot (446 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).