New Laptop Battery Specification Released by IEEE

According to this ExtremeTech article, the new statndard, termed IEEE P1625, covers manufacturing lithium-ion and lithium-ion polymer batteries. The new standard will help "...to reduce the incidence of user problems, the portable computer and battery industries need standardized criteria for qualification of rechargeable battery systems and for verifying the quality and reliability of those batteries." Apple was not a member of the workgroup that developed the new standards but its batteries should benefit anyway. [Dana Baggett]