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.

Comments

External

[dhovis]

This is an external battery pack with 130 W*h capacity. For comparison, the 12" iBook has a 47 W*h battery. So you could extend the iBook's battery life from 4-5 hours to 15-18 hours. It supplements the internal battery.

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.

Innovative

[jonjohnson]

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.

Re:Great idea, kind of...

[brianosaurus]

When its asleep, its asleep. Cron jobs don't run.

I have successfully swapped batteries during sleep on my PB with 1G RAM in it, so I'm not convinced about your fine print.

The only issue I have with the two batteries is that I don't have an external charger. So in order to keep the spare fully charged, I have to swap batteries often. Usually I just let the spare sit for a while, then swap it the night before I go on a trip when I might need it.

Batteries for your Vid Camera.

[jhubbard]

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

Re:Great idea, kind of...

[Tug3]

Do you know if this works in OSX? My PB (April 01) dies each and every time I try this while running OSX (even jaguar) but works perfectly in OS9.

Works perfectly with OS X. The sleep is a hardware feature, so it doesn't matter even if you'd be running Linux... I've tried it personally with PB G3/400 & TiBooks 500, 550 & 667, and a mate of mine with PB G3/500 & iBook 600. All with OS 9 & X - no worries!

My guess is that the problem could be with your PB's internal capasitors. They are the ones keeping the PB asleep while changing batteries. I'd contact Apple about this problem...