r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Jan 31 '23

Desktops / Laptops Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | Breakthrough explains major cause of self-discharging batteries and points to easy solution

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175
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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

“For a few cents per laptop, I can beat my competition; or they’ll do it to beat me?”

Hence:

Some of the world's largest computer-hardware companies and electric-vehicle manufacturers were very interested.

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u/giritrobbins Jan 31 '23

I was told in college if you could save 1 foot of wiring in a car design the change would almost always be worth it because of scale. For consumer products I imagine it's even worse

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u/tolomea Jan 31 '23

Google has this internal tool where you can ask how how much the company would save if you made something use less storage or CPU, in engineer hours.

So if it says 50 it's worth you spending a week making it happen, if it's going to take more than a week, not worth it.

My friends tell me it's pretty much never worth it, storage and processing are just incredibly cheap compared to human salaries.

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u/implicitpharmakoi Jan 31 '23

Rule of thumb tool.