Notebook Battery Chargers?

Nilatir asks: "Here at the University where I work we're checking out Dell notebooks to the students in the library and our main lab. While this is proven to be good for the students I'm having a hard time managing the batteries for the notebooks. By eliminating the floppy drives and using wireless APs to access network shares we were using two Li-Ion batteries in every Latitude and getting almost 8 hours of life a day from them. But, due to some students undying dependence on floppy disks, we were forced to drop down to one battery which will only last half the day at best. We now have an extra battery for each notebook with no way to charge them (even Dell's docking station has no charging bay). Have any slashdotters run into a problem like this and how you all resolve it? Does anyone know of external battery charging station for notebook batteries?" Will laptop makers ever learn that this is one of those accessories that would sell like hotcakes?

Comments

Kick that floppy habit...

[EnlightenmentFan]

How about helping students break their addiction to floppies? Point out the extra hours they'll gain if they store and exchange info using other media--your network, for example.

You can also easily store or exchange a Meg of files in an attachment to a Hotmail message.

How about providing students with Macs? Then they don't have to worry about apps crashing and losing their work. But even when I used Windows, I just saved interim files on the hard drive while I worked and did my real back-up at the end of the day. (Beep beep beep) YMMV.