Micro Fuel Cells for Consumer Electronics

I found this thing earlier today on one of the gadget sites I frequent. I'd lend credit, but they're all carrying it now, so it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, I'm posting it because when I told some friends about it, I realized that I had no idea how it worked.

All I seemed to retain from the article I read was that the UltraCell25 is a methanol powered micro fuel cell that can power a laptop for what I perceived to be a pretty impressive length of time. The thing is about the size of a paperback novel and is light enough to be called portable.

At this point, my friends pointed out that I only seemed to know some rather vague and superficial details about this thing. They, in their tenacious audacity, demanded to know the specifics. Why does it use methanol rather than hydrogen? How is this more efficient than a regular battery? And how does it actually generate electricity from this methanol shit?

To put it bluntly, I don't have a god damned clue. The last time I took a science class was 1998. Most of what I know about technology, I pick up from Slashdot or the Discovery Channel.

So I went back to figure it out only to find the following explanation from their product brochure:

Our Reformed Methanol Fuel Cell (RMFC) technology uses a revolutionary micro reformer to generate fuel-cell ready hydrogen from a highly concentrated methanol solution.

As you can see, that's about as much help as a swift kick to the nuts.

So I give up. For as much as UltraCell is willing to tell me, this thing could generate power by smearing Voodoo enchanted goat snot over a decapitated giraffe carcass.