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Batteries: If Only You Could See the Things I Have Seen With Your Eyes
Thu, 02 Jun 2005

(OKay, that title might be a bit of a reach but it fully applies. Its Roy from Blade Runner lamenting over his life. Replicants in that story have a predetermined lifespan that cannot be adjusted. Another topical line is "I want more life, Father.")

I have a recurring concern about gadgets and batteries. Contrary to what some may think I'm fairly conservative about purchases, though I do like my toys. We only recently bought a digital camera for example, and I do try to avoid buying non-essential gadgets. (I do have to update more frequently than most people for PDA development work purposes so I worry that some people think I'm thrifty .. construction workers don't need to buy a new hammer every 6 months for instance, but IT folks may need to upgrade hardware in that same period of time.) My worry is that all of these gadgets will be dead soon nomatter what anyone tries to do about it...

Rant mode on

We're a throw-away society I know, but some things need to be kept alive. I'm into my retro -- some retro music sure, but mostly retro video games (that I never have time to fiddle with, shut it! I keep old things for _archive_ sake, yeah.. thats it!) I collect arcade cabinets and gear for example - big toys for big boys I say and I'm not alone -- thousands of people across the globe regularly crack out their old systems, and the companies are on top of the phenomena selling direct-to-TV joystick. You can hit up Toys'R'Us right now, lay $25 on the table and walk home with Atari Asteroids, Ms. Pacman or the original Sonic series. Nintendo still sells classic NES titles from 20 years ago. Heck, people still buy Sony PS1 games to play on their PS2 .. gameplay doesn't get old, but artwork does. So retro is very much alive and well for yesteryears consoles ... but what about current consoles and devices in a few years?

Lets talk about investments. Most of us have cell phones, and most of those came free or cheap with a contract. Fine and dandy, but a lot of people buy very fancy phones or smartphones from Nokia or Microsoft or PalmOne and these can cost upwards of $300 to $700USD since they double as media players and personal digital assistants. Likewise people will purchase portable DVD players so their spoilt kids can watch movies in the car (or so they can jet around the world to sales conferences etc.). Lets also talk about the Sony PSP, which has of this month has some 900,000 units nearly shipped, and the Nintendo DS has sold more. The Gameboy Advance and its brethren like the Advance SP with backlight are universal among kids, and can be had used for $30.

What about that nice cordless shaver? Cordless phone? Rechargable radio? It is easy to forget these devices are all battery powered.

The iPod? Oooo, now we're talking. Not only does it have a battery, it has a mechanical hard drive in it, and if you're not careful songs that will only work on the iPod and lock you in... theres a landmine!

Battery technology gets better every year, I think increasing in duration linearly while technology needs increase exponentially, but thats another topic. The big problem is that current battery technologies degrade by time, not necessarily by use. Often the usage pattern can increase or decrease the overal lifespan of the battery, but not by much. It used to be you could toss a spare battery pack in the freezer to buy an extra couple years out of it, but with these guys measured in time from manufacture its just a method of delaying the inevitable.

Buy a Sony PSP now, and maybe over the lifetime of main use a few games to boot. That $700 you just blew will be worth next to nothing in a few years. Sure, give benefit of the doubt with battery pack replacements but in 10 years.. nada. Sure, a few 3rd parties might kick around because its a big big ticket device, but the resale value will be low for sure and there may not be much of a retro movement for these games -- they'll be media lost in time. And that nice shaver might still physucally be fine, but 5 or 8 years later... dead. No real reason to be dead, but dead nonetheless. Like a timebomb.

One thought that comes up is building your own replacement battery packs. Toss a few alkalines in, tape them up and voila ... that used to work. Modern battery packs have a little BIOS chip in them however to help monitor heat, discharge or recharge rate and the like to help increase lifespan or safety. That chip may be hard to remake, and may not work with improvised batteries, so we cannot count on the future of that sub-industry...

So I don't know where I'm going with this rant, but its a worry of mine -- all these devices we buy at countless cost might just be dead in a few years. 10 years from now we might still only have our retro from the 80s as the 2000's games may be gone. I won't mind so much if my current razer dies.

But I think when the current generation of iPod's start to pop people will start to get angry if they want to buy a competing product and find out their music won't port over since they bought it from iTMS instead of ripping it themselves. Then the revolution begins...

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