My batteries are shot

Life really is not smooth for me right now and I am somewhat fed up with blogging. Why? Well, apart from losing my Google blog ranking, from zip to zero?

My old laptop battery needs to be replaced and I also need to get the second travel charger to support the main one, I need a new laptop, I need a reliable and cost effective means of getting steady electric power supply....

Quite a tall order; where will the money come from in these hard times, when you can't even get anyone to buy your second home any time soon if you put it on the block even at giveaway price?

My first laptop battery packed up after about thirteen months, so i missed the warranty period and had to get a new one by trading in the spent power pack at the dealer's.

Now that one has lost the battle of several recharge and discharge cycles - I tend to use my laptop as a desktop because of poor power supply, which forces me to keep it plugged in to the mains in order to take advantage of the variable and unpredictable public electric power supply schedule.

The type of laptop battery I have takes one hour to charge fully and discharges over a period of three hours, if the load demand on it is low - it gives up its power after about an hour of intensive blogging and browsing.

However, because the laptop is connected to an independently powered dial-up Internet access point or telephone, the phone battery is often the problem - even with a new battery, it can discharge in under thirty minutes when fully loaded.

Robust solar power alternatives are really very expensive, inverters are not as expensive but they need to be charged up either with public power supply or a power generator.

The big problem now is that Nigeria wants to 'deregulate' petroleum product prices - so that the already crippling expenses associated with running a generator on petrol, diesel, or even kerosene will become even more disabling financially.

What can I do? I am looking forward to buying a netbook, which does a lot more than my old laptop, has more memory and storage capacity, is more portable by being much lighter and smaller in size, and costs a fraction of the price!

I have heard of laptops with batteries that last up to sixteen hours long but the cost of such a device from an original equipment manufacturer is usually not at all very pocket friendly.

Now there are several promising alternatives to hope for. Take, for example, nuclear batteries, which use radioactive substances in a liquid matrix to store a million times more electric current than standard batteries - and are already in use in pacemakers, satellites, military equipment, and so on.

A re-engineered lithium-ion battery charges in less than twenty seconds, not in six minutes as with standard lithium ion or lithium cobalt batteries, and uses lithium iron phosphate - which is cheap, easy to manufacture, can be recharged indefinitely, and does not cause overheating - because electron-guiding beltways can be created in the porous chemical structure.

At least, while saving up for a new premium laptop system, I have something to look forward to in the next two or three years - by which time the lithium iron phosphate batteries should be ready for sale.

A few tips on how to extend battery life, like the following gems from Canadian expert Isidor Buchmann:

"...charge up your battery when the computer is turned off. When your laptop is turned on and plugged in, you should pull the battery out of your computer...

Charging the battery a little bit before you put it away ensures that it doesn't get down to dangerously low levels while in storage....

The memory effect applies only to nickel-cadmium batteries, whereas most modern electronics use lithium-ion or the more advanced lithium-ion polymer....

[and] you should occasionally "calibrate" your charge meter by depleting your battery completely, then charging it up fully...."