MTI readies portable fuel cells for market

Peng Lim is obsessed with unplugging things.

Lim, CEO of Albany-based MTI (Nasdaq: MKTY), has been a leading executive at Zenith, Fulitsu and Palm -- all early movers in the mobile technology space. Today, Lim is working to make such devices permanently mobile, by removing the last cord-in-the-wall: battery and device chargers.

In the early 1980s, Lim worked with Zenith Data Systems to create the first portable computer. "No one thought they would do well because portable computers were very expensive at the time and had a short battery life," Lim explained while in the Sustainable Industries San Francisco office this week. By the mid-'90s, though, Lim says portable computers took off because mobility was more important to people than expense.

Lim was then recruited by Fujitsu, where he acted as vice president of worldwide product development for wireless computing products. "The portable computer wasn't truly portable," Lim points out. "You could take it with you, but to really use it, you had to plug a cable into the wall to access the Internet."

After overseeing development of some of the first wireless notebooks on the market for Fujitsu, Lim was courted away by Palm (Nasdaq: PALM), where his quest for mobility took one step further. "PDAs took mobility to a whole new level," Lim says. "A portable computer is still a burden: You have to watch over it, keep it with you, worry about it. But a PDA is like a wallet, when you need it it's there, but when you don't, you can put it in your pocket and forget about it."

Now Lim sits at the helm of MTI subsidiary MTI Micro, which is poised to, as he puts it, cut the final cord preventing mobility, replacing batteries and chargers with small, methanol-filled fuel cells.