Even when everyone knows what M$ did with non-interoperability over the last decade, M$ is still at it. They have apparently obtained a patent on battery-compartment contacts that do the right thing whichever end of a dry cell is inserted. If this becomes widespread, consumers will demand everyone use the technology and M$ will rake in the cash from yet another monopoly. Well, they do need to diversify but they don’t need a monopoly to do it. They could earn money the old-fashioned way, by earning it.
BTW, The Inquirer seems to have gotten this wrong. They write of royalty-free licences. Nope. M$ even requires an NDA for a patent. No doubt it is the terms of the licence that they don’t want disclosed. Here we go again…
As for the value of this technology, folks have been making terminals for batteries for ages and all kinds prevent reverse connections. That combined with connectors for negative or positive ends is all this is. Nothing innovative except the business plan, IMHO. The idea behind alternating the polarities is to minimize the contact and lead resistance by minimizing the length of conductor. This invention does away with that advantage. You might as well put them all in nose first and connect the cells in parallel. Anyone can tell the nose from the tail if they have fingers or sight and light.
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It is no mystery. I have had five careers in my life and loved them all. Welding is fun. What other kind of job can a boy have where he gets to play with fireworks all day long? I particularly like welding steel. It is incredibly strong and you can make flat plate take on amazing 3D shapes. I worked in a tractor factory, my own little shop and I taught some welding in school. I worked 7 days a week with overtime and made a pretty penny.
Don’t worry about my energy levels. GNU/Linux, FLOSS and fighting the evil of M$ give me a reason to keep on living. I am only 60. I can keep going another 20+ years and concentrate my full effort into a sixth career being a missionary for GNU/Linux.
The place where I work may be a small community but with the web, I reach thousands more. The community where I work is in park-like surroundings. I plan to return a week or so early to pick mushrooms and blueberries. I will also bring some fishing gear. There are few work-places with such volumes of fresh air, water and life. I love it. The kids I teach are amazing.
All the degrees, accolades, and years of experience you claim to have don’t change the fact that your arguments here are not sound.
Any possible voltage drop using InstaLoad is negligible. For God’s sake, we aren’t talking about powering a wielder, Robert. We’re talking about small, battery operated devices. Next you’ll tell me I need to have the tires on my bicycle computer balanced down at the auto shop to fix a possible problem so small that I’ll never be able to feel it given the speed, mass, size of the tire, and the weight it carries.
Totally, absolutely, unnecessary and ridiculous. It’s the same absurdity applied to a different scenario. InstaLoad is a great idea, but you hate Microsoft to such a degree that you’ll discredit and trash that idea by any means necessary. No logic, physical laws of nature, or common sense is going to stand in your way.
“Well, I have a wireless keyboard that uses 2 ampere hours in about two days of usage so I could calculate the average current at about 100 mA.”
Good grief, Robert! Rather than doing such calculations, you should be out and about seeking a new wireless keyboard! I have a Microsoft Model 6000 that I began to use about a year ago and it still is using the original batteries. I have had to replace the mouse battery a couple of times though. Using a rather expensive DVM to measure the track resistance on an old pc board, I get a value of less than .0001 ohm for a typical 2 inch section since the meter reads zero resistance on the scale where the bottom digit is .0001. That puts the voltage drop at less than 1 microvolt for any kind of device like the keyboard or mouse.
I do find it curious, too, that a nuclear physicist of your reknown would be welding for a living or, for that matter, would end up as an IT weenie in some dead end place as you describe. Given your checkered history, I think that you should leave product design to the engineers and not fret so much about battery terminals and the like. I would bet that the majority of people using these devices would applaud such an innovative improvement and none, other than yourself, would take any offense at them.
That may be the key to mystery as to why the Linux fans are so impotent when it comes to promoting their wares. If you can get so over the top in regard to this simple issue, you will have no time or energy for the real issues.
Well, I have a wireless keyboard that uses 2 ampere hours in about two days of usage so I could calculate the average current at about 100 mA. I could combine that with the resistivity of copper and a typical thickness and width to come up with a number but why waste my time. Have you noticed that at points where power is supplied to a circuit board, the traces are wider? There’s a reason for that, to minimize voltage drop and to reduce the chances of toasting the board. One of my careers was welding and at a couple of hundred amperes the voltage drop seriously affects performance in a few metres of cable of huge diameter. For battery operated equipment, the same is true for a few inches. The extra few inches to get the polarity right with this scheme does matter.
Well, Robert, perhaps, with your deep knowledge of Ohm’s Law, you could calculate the voltage drop across a couple of inches of printed circuit track at the current drain of a typical device such as an RF mouse. A quick guess on my part is about .000001 volt under some extreme conditions, but I am just an electrical engineer and have not considered what might occur on the nuclear level. LOL.
It never ceases to amaze me that total strangers on the web assume they understand such trivial technology and I with a M.Sc. in nuclear physics and a lifetime working with all kinds of technology do not. I attended a technical high school in the 1960s where we were familiarized with Ohm’s law and its consequences. I have designed electromagnets and radio-frequency structures and circuits with stringent requirements for particle accelerators.
“…folks have been making terminals for batteries for ages and all kinds prevent reverse connections.”
Microsoft’s design doesn’t prevent reverse connections, it makes them impossible from the start. Current designs require you to remove and reinsert the batteries in the correct order if not inserted correctly the first time. This inconvenience is eliminated by this new design.
“You might as well put them all in nose first and connect the cells in parallel.”
Well, you need 3 volts to run your device, but wiring a pair of 1.5 volt batteries in parallel only increases the available CURRENT, not the VOLTAGE. Oops! You do understand the difference between batteries wired in Series and Parallel, right?
“The idea behind alternating the polarities is to minimize the contact and lead resistance by minimizing the length of conductor.”
Again, wrong. The polarities are alternated when batteries are wired in series for reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph.
In most devices, like my digital camera, the batteries are not inserted end to end in order to save space. This design requires a connector inside the camera to bridge the two batteries. This is located under the batter door. It’s unlikely this new device will add a significant amount of circuitry, therefore a significant drop in voltage is unlikely.
Not so. Typical computer equipment uses switching power supplies derived from the battery and may draw heavy spikes from the battery in which case the lead resistance matters. Flashlights tend to draw a steady current but then the battery still delivers more power to the load with the path of least resistance.
“Read the links. M$ says they have “reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms. The Inquirer says “royalty-free”.”
Royalty-free is very reasonable, eh? You find a button and sew a shirt on it and then complain of the color. I suspect that the Inquirer actually contacted Microsoft to get that information whereas you pulled it out of thin air.
“Electrical resistance is proportional to length for a given cross-section and material”
And is equal to zero for any practical purpose other than your silly hair-splitting arguments, Robert! LOL
With a diode bridge you can reroute cells, too, but two forward voltage drops out of the voltage of the cell is very serious, even with Schottky diodes because of the typically low voltage of a cell, 0.8 to 3 volts.
I remember old battery-powered electronic devices would blowout if you inserted the battery wrong (reversed polarity). Later, as I understand, diodes were put in the circuit just after the battery. It prevented a reversal of the current. Inserting a battery incorrectly shouldn’t damage the electronics. Possibly break something mechanical, but not expensive electronics.
Read the links. M$ says they have “reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms. The Inquirer says “royalty-free”.
I don’t question the usefulness of the technique but it is more important for its revenu-generating potential than its technology. It also reduced energy efficiency as the length of the circuit will be longer. Electrical resistance is proportional to length for a given cross-section and material. To offset this effect requires heavier conductors, raising costs and consumption of material.
“They write of royalty-free licences. Nope.”
Where do you come by this information, Robert? The same place on your anatomy where you get many of your other ideas? I can only presume that you have better sources than the Inquirer. I am curious as to what they are.
“M$ even requires an NDA for a patent. No doubt it is the terms of the licence that they don’t want disclosed. ”
If so, then why do you sneer about it being for a patent? I think that you just want to sneer and that is dishonest.
“Nothing innovative except the business plan, IMHO.”
Well, Robert, it is easy for you to know all about it once someone else shows it to you, but that is what patents are for. Someone decided that a faultless battery insertion technique would have some value, if only in negating the effect of carelessness on the part of users who are not as meticulous as yourself. So they found a need and filled it and were awarded a patent for their innovative thinking. Heavens knows, you would never have thought of it. You probably think that the guy who figured out how to fold the top of a waxed milk carton to form a drinking and pouring spout should not get a patent and the subsequent riches. He sold the rights to Excelo for millions, I understand.