Searching for a Holy Grail in age of battery overload

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Pardon this space while I go on a rant, but I hope you can relate.Batteries are getting worse.I mean, in the space of a week or two the batteries in my iPod, my wireless mouse, a smoke detector, my cell phone, my wife's cell phone, two laptops, a TomTom GPS and the TiVo remote have gone south. This is not trivial in a few cases. Opening an iPod is not for the gutless; it is an operation that involves two odd plastic screwdrivers you need to buy on eBay, a guitar pick, two Band-Aids and tons of patience. (Thank you, Steve Jobs). The smoke detector I thought would be a slam-dunk with a 9-volt, but it turned out to be a special smoke-detector battery available only on select parts of Pluto. The cell-phone batteries I can either get on eBay and end up with Chinese junk or pay through the nose at the dealer. The TomTom I haven't had time to open to see what kind of battery is even in it and the rest will use a healthy collection of AA's, which likely in my lifetime I have used tens of thousands. (Sorry, Al Gore.) I think the man or woman who comes up with a decent battery technology will really have the Holy Grail of electronica. Every night I have to plug my lovely Windows-based PDA phone so I can use it the next day and pray for a full day of use. When I travel through airports I see road warriors huddled around power outlets like Cub Scouts around a campfire making S'mores. (Please, just let me get enough juice to finish this report or this movie or this song...)This was made worse after the Department of Homeland Security made it illegal to put spare lithium batteries in checked bags for some reason. That spawned a new industry that must horrify environmentalists, namely the $10 disposable battery that travelers buy at airport convenience stores when their cell phones and iPods die.Anyway, I just want a device to last more than a full work day with no effort at all yet still not weigh a pound. Is that too much to ask? Well today, probably. But researchers are about five years from new technologies that will leverage existing lithium cells and at least triple the current life of the same battery space. That certainly will help. Of course, there are other technologies, including nanowire, that offer other opportunities for small batteries. I have seen other options, including solar, that are interesting but too odd to be viable. Some devices, including the way-cool One Laptop Per Child project, are going back to the crank to provide power.That brings me to laptops, which use these huge, clunky and unreliable batteries. I have been buying a bunch of knock-off batteries lately and have had terrible luck with them. The "you get what you pay for" motto is alive and well when it comes to these cheapos. I think when the "real" battery is $200 and you can find one on eBay for $30, you have a good reason to be suspicious.James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer service company and tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at jim(at)cyberdads.com