Although electronics manufacturers have made substantial strides in getting their devices to eke more life out of a battery charge, one of the chief complaints among consumers remains the perceived short run time of audio players, notebooks and other devices.

"You can never be too rich, too thin or have enough battery life," said Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Techworld. "While everyone is focused on improving battery life, we still have a long way to go."

In many ways, it's a Sisyphean task. On the one hand, technologies deployed over the past few years--deep sleep states, screens made of organic light-emitting diodes, chips that can regulate their speeds and energy-efficient software--have dramatically reduced power consumption and thereby extended battery life on a variety of devices.

Batteries in notebooks, which five years ago typically lasted only two hours, now can run up to five or more hours.

The Logitech MX 1000 cordless mouse, meanwhile, can run 21 days on a full charge, thanks to a wide variety of tweaks to virtually all of the internal components that use electricity, the company says.