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10-Hour PowerBook Battery
Anonymous Coward writes "Valence has apparently caved to pressure from Mac fans and finally released iBook/TiBook compatible cabling for their N-Charge Power System. The N-Charge is a $300, 10-Hour Lithion-Ion battery that powers laptops and cell phones/pdas at the same time. The next step? How about adapters to power my miniDV camcorder?" There's also a lighter version that has about half the power, for half the price.
Besides that, isn't Apple slated to release a new laptop battery earlier next year? Wouldn't it be better to wait on the OEM battery?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that batteries are heading in that direction.
Too bad "AA" and "AAA" batteries don't last that long (proportionally)
I want one.
Why not just buy an extra battery?
Well, I know I might sound a bit pessimistic, but sue me...
Anyway, you never have too much batterylife ofcourse, but I still would personally choose to buy extra batteries for my TiBook. This unit they talk about here is an external battery with a cable, seems very clumsy to me. And with TiBook's (& iBook's) feature that you can change the battery while the laptop is sleeping, I really don't see the use for this kind of product. But that's just me
OK, I would like one to use with a PC laptop as I haven't seen one with the above mentioned feature. And yes, I do use both - just to mention before you lit the flamer.
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
"There's also a lighter version that has about half the power, for half the price."
Half the power. That would be five hours, right? Um. There's this battery that gets five hours and it comes free with the ibook.
I'm not sure I'd be too keen on buying one of these devices, as I can't think of many cases where a fully charged spare battery wouldn't do the trick. I guess a flight to japan would require 15 hours of battery time or so, but I can't think of something I would want to do for 15 hours straight on a plane.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
The downside? It weighs ~3 pounds, about 60% as heavy as the iBook.
Still, I can see the appeal for people who have frequent long flights.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
I bet they won't be encased in Titanium or White plastic, and that will turn off some users. Additionally, the size & weight issue, vs. carrying a spare battery (or even two) makes this somewaht redundant. Unless you need uninterrupted computing, you're better off carrying two spare batteries...
I consider this battery system to be a very innovative and useful product. Why? Sure, it does provide power to your laptop of choice, but, it also provides adapters for cell phones and other devies (possibly even more in the future). However, I do think that the smaller battery is a waste since a new Apple iBook battery cost me 130 when I bought it, and I'm sure there are places to get it cheaper.
I've been using the Electrovaya with my PBG4 for about a month. And the difference between using a high power external battery and carrying extra PB batteries is night & day. I traveled one day from Oakland to upstate New York. Watched two DVD movies, did a ton of work, had juice for my layover in Kennedy, and when I arrived in ALbany 13 hours later, I still had power. And I never had to shut down or sleep to swap batteries and keep my fingers crossed when swapping them. I wonder how this puppy compares in weight & endurance. The Electrovaya is all smooth surfaces; no hump in the middle. But I really love the phone/PDA port. And oh, the Valence is more than $100 cheaper.
There are more and more people who are using laptops to record music in the field. Often they are recording at 24/48 or 24/96. This wide bandwidth consumes huge amounts of power because of the continuous disk access (I have found that recording at 24/48 takes 1.5 times the battery power of 16/44.1). When you are recording live music in the field, you do not have the luxury of putting your laptop to sleep - you never know how long they will be playing for. In addition, you may be powering an external USB or FireWire based A/D converter/Microphone preamp - for example, the Digidesign M-Box. For all of these situations, this sounds like an ideal supplement to the internal battery. The #1 reason I have not upgraded from my FireWire PBG3 is because it has 2 battery bays and one you can swap batteries without powering down/sleeping. Lastly, a unit like this has much more of a life than your laptop. Because of the modularity of a battery and a power cable, you don't have to concern yourself with laptop upgrades - I'm psyched I have 3 batteries for my PowerBook G3, but when I do upgrade, all those batteries will be useless. With something like this, all I would need would be a new cable. Again, this is great News!!! Eytan
Isn't that a long time for a battery to recharge? Seriously, what is the big deal?
foe me, freak me.
Considering how large that battery is. Your laptop isn't really that portable.
...Or if there is no power carry an extra iBook battery or two.
Why not just plug in to a wall....
That thing looks huge.
With Batteries like this there is no need to limit the RPMs of a harddrive in laptops. Im sure Limiting the rpm has to do more with size, but couldnt we develop a 7200rpm harddrive for our laptops? With this kind of battery we dont need to worry about it straining our batteries. I currently dont have a Laptop because the speed of a laptop is not onpar with Desktop computers. With Batteries like this, we could pack anything into a laptop and wouldnt have to worry about Battery life.
What is the fastest RPM drive that is 2.5"?
keanmarine.com
Is this ten hours of powering up the machine and letting it sit idle, or ten hours of actual use. If this thing is going to last through ten straght hours of quake sign me up now!
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
If you need a battery system for your video camera, you should check out Anton Bauer. They are primarily concerned with the professional, but the sales rep that I talked to mentioned that they were getting into prosumer products. Supposedly CNN and a bunch of other organizations use these things. I was told the CNN reporters covering Afghanistan were using them along with some Sony DV equipment.
It's all hearsay though.
--James
Having a portable power source is cool for a lot of reasons (think peripherals), but it doesn't fill a PowerBook or iBook shortfall; when it comes to portables, PCs can't touch the Mac.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
So say I run down my internal battery, and then plug in this nifty toy. It will then charge my internal battery while powering the machine. Doubtful it would charge it all the way, but certainly would charge it - so then you have a partially charged battery and a quickly draining 3lb battery. What a pain in the ass.
to email me: take my
After all, all the keys necessary are there for you to type "I am an anal retentive dipshit."
You use openbsd so you must have a good grasp on how to optimize things - use this with the mac http://www.resexcellence.com/hack_html_01/10-30-01 .shtml
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
I have a 667 with 1 Gig of RAM and I often put mine to sleep (by closing the lid) and then pull out the battery and put the new one in. Then I open it up and it works.
I don't know where you saw this fine print but cron does not run when it's asleap, nothing does.
-Chris