Green-certified battery available for HP consumer notebooks in early 2009

I don't know about you, but I've been trying to eke out as much life as possible from my aging notebook computer, not just because I'm leery of spending the money but because it's better for the environment for me not to get a new one just because it's cool. The one downside, though, is that one of the batteries for this particular laptop is way old and way feeble. Sound familiar?

Well, it doesn't matter much in my particular instance, but come early next year you'll be able to buy a brand-new, longer-lasing Lithium-ion batter for some consumer-class notebooks from Hewlett-Packard. The Sonata batteries, from innovator Boston-Power, will be sold by HP as an "Enviro" replacement battery. No word yet on price; in fact, HP doesn't even have this information up on its Web site yet, which is sort of interesting.

The promise of the Sonata technology is that it performs "like-new" for up to three years. The batteries carry a three-year warranty to back up this promise. The technology also carries the Nordic Ecolabel, which is part of something called the Global Ecolabelling Network, an organizes that recognizes companies that have been "conscientious" regarding the environmental impact and disposal of their technology.

Batteries that use the Sonata format can be dropped into existing notebooks. What I'm actually really curious about is why the technology is first available for a consumer model and not one that is used by the people that beat batteries up the most, professionals like me who lug their computer around for a living and who look like electricity junkies in airports and other public places when it comes to finding place to charge.