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Technology Stocks : ULBI..Ultralife Batteries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: webpilot who wrote (168)	1/20/1998 3:44:00 AM
From: Javelyn Bjoli	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 522

GS-Melcotec recently introduced some new lithium-ion prismatic batteries. Most likely these are targeted at Asian cell phones, but there is no reason they couldn't be used in a notebook if you were going for thinness as a key design element. They are the "older" Li-ion technology, that is, not polymer, but they are probably very comparable (within 10%) of the capacity & weight of Ultralife's solution. They could even be better, although in the long run ULBI has at least the theoretical room to pull away as their technology matures. Cost should be similar, but then if you've got 6000 units x $6000 each worth of product sitting around waiting for batteries, it's not so much of an issue. If you have seen the Mitsubishi (aka HP) notebook they are going into, you know that the usual Li-ion cells will not fit in there. As to Ultralife being designed out for the time being, ULBI knows they are not going to be designed into anything right now without a backup plan. Products that could be made even thinner are not yet, because vendors have to be able to fall back on "ordinary" Li-ion prismatics as Mitsubishi is being forced to do. Only once the production capacity is established can product designers really take advantage of the unique properties of these batteries. Here is the only (pitiful) picture I could find: nippondenchi.co.jp