The first netbooks, such as the ASUS 701 4G and the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC, used Intel Celeron M and VIA C-7M CPUs. Now almost all netbooks use one of Intel’s low-end Atom CPUs, usually the Intel Atom N270 or Z520. Some newer netbooks feature the Atom N280, which consumes less power than the N270. Both these CPUs run at 1.6GHz,have a 512KB cache and a 533MHz front-side bus connection to the memory. The Intel Atom Z520 runs at 1.3GHz. They are all single-core CPUs but have Hyper-Threading. This means they are capable of running two processes simultaneously, which aids multitasking. The Intel Atom CPUs run much cooler than the Celeron and VIA CPUs (the VIA CPU in particular gets very hot inside the small confines of a netbook). AMD has released a low-voltage chip suitable for netbooks — the Athlon 64 L110 — but it isn’t widely used yet.

Of course, this being Vista, I have options — three of them, to be exact. To get a little more juice out of my Dell Inspiron 9200 battery, I can choose “Power saving” mode, where the screen goes so dim I feel like I’ve got cataracts and the processor churns so slowly that by the time the little hourglass/cursor stops spinning I’ve forgotten what it is I wanted to do in the first place. Then there’s the damn-the-batteries-full-speed-ahead “High performance”  mode, which with Vista means something comparable to the Windows 98 machine I owned a decade ago. And then there’s “Balanced,” which offers the worst of both worlds.

Brownouts are caused by a drop in voltage. (This is when your lights dim.) They can cause damage to unprotected electrical items.

A Rolling Blackout, is intentionally caused by the power company as a last resort when the load demand is greater than the capability of the power supply. They are planned blackouts to temporarily reduce the load demands.

It seems a battered economy is good for the replacement battery business. Sales at some stores are up 20 percent as people try to extend the lives of their electronics. Store manager Jonathan Dascotte says a new cell phone battery avoids the cost of a new phone and a new two-year contract.

MobileMark came into widespread use several years ago. It measures Dell Vostro 1000 battery life while a machine is performing a number of tasks, including playing a DVD or creating a spreadsheet. The test was developed by the Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo), a nonprofit trade group whose membership is made up mostly of laptop and chip manufacturers. Indeed, BAPCo counts among its members Intel, one of the very companies who would stand to profit from the use of the MobileMark test.

China is a technology hub and things like Dell or Acer laptop batteries retail for cheaper prices. These batteries can be sold in bulk or individually and needless to say, better prices are always scored when purchases are made in bulk. At this point another idea springs up. Why not sell cheap high quality replacement laptop batteries from China.

Becker predicts that this sort of purchase will account for 64 percent of light vehicle sales by 2030. Calculating that electric vehicles are 10 to 13 cents per mile cheaper to own than gasoline cars, Becker forecasts that electric vehicles could account for 24 percent of the light-vehicle fleet by 2030.