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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.
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.
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.
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
In my case, I'd buy one because the cost of an extra 59.2Wh battery for my Sony Vaio is US$249.99. For an extra $50, I can get this behemoth 120Wh battery pack that I can simply leave in my rollerbag and just yank out a cable when I feel I need to start leeching some amps off of it.
Michael C. Hollinger
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.
blog
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