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Comment by danmaz74 | Hacker News Reader

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danmaz74·

So now we only need better batteries, and we'll soon be able to cut and weld metal with our phone?? :D

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Wouldn't about 12kg of laptop batteries provide 4kW?( wikipedia: ~250-~340 W/kg ) Put them in a backpack.

Well, Osborne 1 was 10.7 kgs and it was considered a laptop, so there is that.

My dad had one when I was a kid. They were called luggables, and weren't meant to be put on laps....

What if you had really strong legs? You're right, of course.

One of these would provide 4 kW, too (although I don't know for how long), and is only 5.8 kg:

http://www.ev-power.eu/Winston-40Ah-200Ah/WB-LYP160AHA-LiFeY...

My limited experience with lasers is the heatsink problem is significant, so worry about dissipating a couple KW of heat in your hand or backpack, not carrying around a mere couple KWh of energy.

I imagine it would sound and feel much like holding an industrial heat gun for awhile. This might be a problem.

right; 40% efficiency means 40% comes out as light; the other 60% comes out as heat.

Hmm, now I'm imagining something like Reason (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Reason). A backpack sized battery, but needs a water-submersed heatsink.

Even if we had the batteries, where would you put the kilowatts of waste heat that would be generated by it's use?

That would be like storing your super battery inside a toaster that it's powering. Yikes.

The individual laser blades aren't small and all the assorted cooling apparatus is pretty sizable. Some video of it in action: http://www.photonics.com/VideoGallery.aspx?DGID=4c2495b26887...

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