Is there any technology problem more annoying than battery life? Cell phone calls get cut off, computers shut down in the middle of a game (or movie, or document), iPods stop playing music. It’s maddening.

As always, technology is trying to ride to its own rescue. Hitachi and Toshiba are both developing fuel cells which could power a laptop running at maximum consumption for up to 10 hours, both companies claim. The cells will run on a mixture of chemicals, 30% to 40% of which will be methanol. Recharging a fuel cell would require the laptop owner to pour more methanol into the tank, almost like gassing up an automobile. I’m not sure how the Transportation Safety Administration will feel about this (they declined to comment on a problem that doesn’t exist yet), but if fuel cells let us finally watch a whole DVD movie on a laptop with the screen on full brightness, I’m all for them. Too bad neither company expects to put a fuel cell on the market until 2007.

In the meantime, we’re stuck with tricks and tactics to extend laptop life.

First, lower your expectations. Laptop makers from Apple to Dell to Toshiba swear they can deliver five to six hours of power on a single charge, but at full-screen brightness and doing processor-heavy tasks such as watching a movie or running several programs at once, most laptops last little more than two hours – and often less. With proper modifications of the software settings, a user can get four hours, especially if the use is moderate, like word processing or simple games.

There are five primary power hogs in the laptop: the monitor, the speakers, the CD/DVD drive, the processor chip, and the wireless card, in that order. Muting all sound and lowering screen brightness by at least 50% are the quickest ways to get almost a full extra hour of power on many computers. Most laptops have keyboard keys or small buttons on the monitor to control sound and brightness. Watching a DVD on a dim screen is frustrating, but with other applications, the difference is minimal. Wire less cards use energy even when there’s no signal, so turn the card off to gain a few extra minutes, and avoid using the removable media drives.

In short, getting the most out of a battery means using the laptop in less and less entertaining ways. Each user will have to choose how best to make the trade-off between length of use and quality of use.

To get the absolute maximum out of a laptop battery before getting on a plane, drain and recharge the battery once or even twice before boarding. Nearly all laptops come with Lithium Ion batteries these days, since they weigh the least and don’t develop “memory” in the form of a crystalline buildup that the nickel batteries did. Draining and recharging them is a bit like pulling back a swinging pendulum so that it swings on a longer arc. The further extension of the swing up on the other side is equivalent to longer battery life.

If none of that provides enough battery to keep the computer running all the way from New York to Los Angeles – and it won’t – there’s always the option of buying another battery. But since the point of a laptop is portability, few people want to lug the extra equipment. Personally, I’m hoping the fuel cells make this problem go away.