Pre CES 2007 coverage - Las Vegas (NV) - Following Samsung's recent announcement of a fuel cell-powered notebook that apparently can run one month on one fill-up, Toshiba will be showing an update to its active and passive fuel cell research for mobile computing applications. At the Consumer Electronics Show 2007, the company will be displaying what the firm describes as substantially smaller fuel cells that are powering a DMFC (direct methanol fuel cell) notebook PC as well as a portable, hard drive-based DMFC audio player.

Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC) utilize a membrane as an electrolyte and produce electricity directly from liquid methanol, instead of employing a catalytic fuel reformer. Despite the fact that efficiency of DMFCs is still below current battery technologies, firms such as Samsung expect that first fuel cell "batteries" will be shipping into the consumer market before the end of 2007.