I think a lot of the battery confusion goes back to ni-cads which would develop a memory if they were only discharged a little bit before being recharged over and over again. They needed to be totally discharged fairly often.
The article is right about the number of pixels tho it is still good to have a lot. They are getting to where they can put 24 megapixels on a 35mm sized sensor and still maintain extreme quality.
The real problem is the tiny sensors on P&S cameras which sometimes contain tiny sensors which combined with a lot of pixels result in a lot of noise and not good low light capability.
Even those tiny sensors will do OK in good light tho still not equal to the large sensors in late model DSLRs.
laptop batteries still die pretty easily though
especially if they are Toshiba