HP to Offer 3-Year Laptop Battery

A fast-charging laptop battery that promises to last at least three years without any degradation in performance is coming to the market as an option with Hewlett-Packard laptops. The Sonata battery is the product of three years of development work by Boston-Power and will be rebranded by HP as the Enviro battery and offered from early 2009 with select machines. The battery can be charged to 80 percent of capacity in 30 minutes, which could be useful for travellers who only have a limited amount of time near an electric outlet, and will go 1,000 charges before the battery’s capacity begins degrading. That’s a charge a day for three years — or four years if it’s only used on weekdays — so it should last the average life of a business laptop. Common laptop batteries today start to degrade after 300 charges