Battery management, the bane of geeks everywhere

I'm something of a gadget freak. But one with a limited budget. But I'm getting really annoyed with managing the charge on all my rechargeable devices.

On a daily basis I use several gadgets that have to be charged:

• a laptop
• a cell phone
• a PDA
• a portable MP3 player

Life isn't so bad when I'm in my dull boring day-to-day routine. The laptop spends most of the daytime hours in a docking station so it's charged there. I plug the cell phone and the PDA in beside my bed each night (and hope that LiON batteries really don't have a memory). The MP3 player gets about an hour or two a day of use so it only needs charging every three to five days, sometimes less frequently.

The annoyance level goes up a lot when I travel. Chargers. Grr... Since I'm on a budget and I don't travel all that frequently I don't really feel I can afford one of those all-in-one chargers. So I carry a charger for each device. And try to plug them in to the limited number of outlets in the average hotel room.

For personal travel I generally have to add the digital still camera and digital video camera, both with chargers.

I keep reading stories about fuel cell technology that's "just around the corner" so we could fill up our devices with water to recharge them. But I keep wondering just where the cell phone I carry in my pocket is going to exhaust the waste from such a process. Or isn't there any?