Five years ago, he met Macdonald, who attended Ein-Eli’s lecture on electrochemistry, and they decided to work together, with the American coming to visit his Technion lab once a year.
The team obtained from the Japanese researcher an ionic liquid (liquid electrolytes or salts that form stable liquids) that does not evaporate easily. Most of the work was performed in the Haifa lab.
If more screen space is what you need, keep in mind that manufacturers have been showing off some multiple-screen laptop ideas that may be coming soon, including Asus’s Dual-Panel E-reader/Netbook, gScreen’s concept with two slide-out 15.4-inch LCD screens, and Intel’s Tangent Bay prototype with a regular display plus three OLED touchscreens right above the keyboard.
Making a strong case for multitouch functionality is tough when software isn’t up to speed, the business usages for it are limited, and the premium for it is at least $125. Luckily, multitouch is an optional feature. More importantly, it doesn’t detract from the effectiveness of the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet (Multitouch) as convertible tablet. It’s still the best tablet out there, with or without touch.
The Aspire One D250 has a 10.1-inch screen, which is the same size as current Aspire One computers but the resolution has been increased to 1,280 pixels by 720 pixels. The computer features a 1.66GHz version of Intel’s Atom N280 processor and a 160GB hard-disk drive.
The follow-up to Toshiba’s award-winning, super-compact netbook is now available with Windows 7 Starter. The Toshiba mini NB205 will continue to feature a 10.1-inch diagonal widescreen display, full-sized keyboard, laptop-sized touchpad and nine-hour battery life. Toshiba will offer the mini NB205 in multiple configurations with either 160GB or 250GB hard drive configurations and a choice of five color finishes: Sable Brown, Frost White, Indigo Blue, Posh Pink and Onyx Black.
Despite the awkward battery placement and only fair benchmark scores, the U505 is a good value if you want a general workhorse computer with good media capabilities, a great keyboard, and a reasonably long battery life.
Some metal-air batteries exist, such as those using lithium, and are cheaper and lighter because they lack a cathode structure. Various big companies such as IBM, together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are trying to develop rechargeable lithium-air batteries that could function 10 times longer than conventional batteries, but they have not yet succeeded.
Finally, Toshiba includes a good software bundle. Besides the utilities already mentioned, you get a hard-drive protection utility to prevent nasty head crashes in the event of minor accidents. Toshiba’s ConfigFree network and communications utility makes it a snap to set up and troubleshoot wired and wireless problems. Third party software includes Microsoft Works 9, Corel DVD MovieFactory, Cyberlink PowerCinema, and a Toshiba-branded DVD player, all of which should cover most basic computing and media tasks.