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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.
Because an extra battery on a 14.1" iBook gives you merely 55 Wh extra power, whereas this gives you 130Wh extra, while also enabling you to not switch batteries. So, the difference is between 110 Wh in total with a batteryswap (and hence a hibernate or shutdown) in the middle or 185 Wh without the need to swap batteries. I know what I would choose.
(*drool* 185 Wh... that amounts to about 18 hours of computing off the grid!)
"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.
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...
So why not buy 2 extra batteries? The total price would still be only $260, considerably less than the $300 they want for the Valence monster. And more significantly to me, the standard PB batteries are much more conveniently sized. The Valence thing is 12" x 9". I'd have a much easier time finding space for 2 extra PowerBook or iBook batteries in my laptop bag.
Also note: The new PowerBooks come with 61 Wh batteries, not 55. The Apple store doesn't seem to be selling the 55 wH batteries seperately, yet, but I'm sure they will, and I'm guessing that we'll see improved iBook batteries, too.