Battery technology sucks. As these comments by infuriated Ipod users make clear, it's still in the Stone Age.

The Stone Age is catching up with me in the form of a war between the dying batteries in my cell phone and its bluetooth earpiece -- both of which are the same age. Even under ideal circumstances, using the blue tooth causes the cell phone battery to discharge at a faster than normal rate, but now that both are old (and have been recharged too many times), things are unpredictable and wild. Sometimes the phone battery will quit and sound the alarm after only an hour, and other times the bluetooth quits first. But it's clear that the two dying batteries are each hastening the death of the other. It's as if they're in competition to see whose death will come first. The most infuriating aspect of this is that the bluetooth will have just enough life to hold onto its connection with the phone, but not enough to be usable. The more I charge and recharge, the more I hasten the demise of both batteries.

Trying to figure out the "rules" as to how long a battery will last is an exercise in futility. There are numerous competing opinions -- how often to recharge, whether to let it run down all the way, whether "third party" replacements are as good or better than the original -- and it seems that there are simply thousands and thousands of individual anecdotes, each one contradicting the other. I am forced to conclude only two things:

all batteries eventually die;

buying a battery does not necessarily mean you will get what they call "a good one."

Clearly, technology is ahead of the batteries that power it.

Something's got to change.

I've read about emerging technology, but it just plain isn't here yet.

A nuclear laptop battery that lasts virtually forever has been developed, but as the inventors admit, there are "minor disadvantages":

"Due to government regulations, use of a laptop powered by XCell-N is prohibited in airports, government offices, schools, hospitals, public transport, hotels, residential areas or within 12 miles of food preparation areas.". XCell-N also weighs substantially more than a regular laptop battery, coming in at 7 kilograms (15.4 lbs).

While Shephard says they are committed to safety, he does not recommend close exposure to an XCell-N powered laptop for more than 20 minutes a day.

Glenn Reynolds says needing better batteries is the bottom line and he mentions the Ultracapacitor, which look great to me.

I always worry, though, about the Coalition of Luddites which seems to advocate new technologies only as long as they remain non-viable. Once people on a large scale actually start implementing a new technology (or revise an old one to suit the environmentalists' demands), the once "green" cause then becomes a new enemy. Sorry to sound so cynical, but as I observed in an earlier post, I have seen the following wonderful new "earth friendly" technologies all initially advocated, only to later be rigorously opposed:

wood burning stoves ("SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS!")

Windmills (bird killers)

Biodiesel (now said to be destroying the rainforests)

There is no pleasing environmentalists, because to them, the ultimate enemy is man, and human technology, no matter how "green" it might be, only serves to enable human existence and enhance our proliferation on the threatened planet. I have long suspected that if a real, viable, cold fusion or power cell technology emerged that would allow every man to have his own, virtually free, unlimited power generation facility (enabling humans to live anywhere free from having to be hooked up to the power grid), they would resolutely oppose it.

But there's still a window of opportunity to develop better batteries before the environmentalists smarten up and develop a uniform policy of Opposing Any And All Technological Improvements That Might Help Enable Man.