Slashdot Mirror
User Review of N-Charge II Laptop Battery
First and foremost, the battery simply does not last as long as the first-generation battery did. I used both batteries on flights to Japan from the west coast of the U.S. -- that's about a 10-hour flight. The first-gen battery lasted close to seven hours, and was consistent in showing me the strength of its remaining charge through the whole flight. The second-generation battery lasted more like five and a half hours, and the battery went from showing moderate charge (two lights) to dying completely in less than an hour. That is not at all what I expected from a display.
Secondly, and only slightly less important, are the changes in the shape. The first-gen battery was the perfect shape and size to fit under my laptop, even when I used it with laptops with a slightly different footprint; the battery was large enough (length & width) that even larger laptops were still stable resting on it. It was also thin enough that having a footprint mismatch wasn't a big problem (either in terms of ergonomics or in terms of stability for the laptop). The second-gen battery is a horrible form factor. Just plain and simple, it doesn't appear to have been designed to take into account how people will use it. It's too tall to fit nicely under a laptop with a different footprint and the small size (length & width) ensure that any laptop resting on top of it will be completely off-balance.
I don't know what the company's use cases were for the device, but the most common times I use the external battery are either when I am sitting somewhere with no desk or power (and hence all my devices need to be on my lap or on the floor, but I have space to spread them out), or when I am on an airplane and have the same power scenario as the first case, but also am severely cramped for space in general.
If I have space (but no desk) then I need a long enough cord to get from my power supply to my laptop. That means that either the battery has to fit under the laptop (in which case it can have a short cord) or it needs to have a nice long cord (much longer than the short non-extendable one provided). N-Charge has failed to provide for either of these options.
If I'm on an airplane, the battery needs to fit under the laptop. Period. I might be willing to place it in the seat-back pocket, but the second-gen battery is too thick to fit well there. I might be willing to have it in my backpack on the floor in front of me (though that is so awkward that it is almost certainly dangerous if I have an emergency) but the cord is far too short for that.
I think the change to three charge lights (instead of 5 in the first version) was pointless, and that more information is better than less -- but I can accept it, so long as they are accurate. Unfortunately, they aren't. They don't seem to represent 1/3 of the charge each, more like 1/6, 1/3 and 1/2 respectively.
The new power adapter tips are easier to lose and don't fit my laptop port as well as the first-gen plugs. This has caused my laptop to end up being disconnected from the battery spontaneously and it appears to be slowly damaging the socket in my laptop, possibly due to wiggling.
At this point, I am planning on trying to return the second-gen battery and go find someone who will sell me one of the first-gen batteries on e-Bay. I'm tremendously disappointed and hope that N-Charge's third generation shows better design.
Thanks to Occams Razor for the review; Slashdot's new Hardware section could use your reviews, too.
I always felt that my batteries did better after a couple of charges. Maybe the new one was too new?
yeah, airport security sometimes look at you when you have a battery pack you soldered together yourself, but no one has stopped me yet.
Have you looked into the inverters they sell in the airplane's boutique? Most passenger aircraft now have power recepticals under the seats and it would seem to me to be better than lugging an extra battery around. AFAIK these are DC (12V or whatever the plane uses) to AC (110V).
What I don't know is how much / if these differ from ones you would purchase for your car.
Has anyone tried making a battery pack out of rechargeable NIMH batteries? From what I remember, they're 1.2V, so you could just put a number of them in series to match the proper voltage, and hook up a set of those in parallel to increase capacity. I've been wanting to do this but lack a good way to hold all these batteries together.
I was looking at the data sheets for the two versions of the N-Charge.
They're both pretty light on details. But... at least the Series I data sheet gives you dimensions and capacity (in watthours)
The Series II datasheet only has the dimensions listed with the optional expansion pack, as a footnote on the bottom of the 2nd page, and no charge capacities at all. It's almost as if they're embarrassed to state anything. It's not a 'data sheet' at all.
...the newer battery wasn't quite so 'new'. It would explain the seemingly quick loss of power (going from half full to empty in an hour). Makes one wonder if the parts used were taken from old stock.
I like it a lot. I got it cheap with a rebate a few years ago (far cheaper than a replacement laptop battery) and it extended my refurb laptop to 6+ hrs of life. I believe you can put it under your laptop but the heat supposedly degrades battery performance.
Take performance numbers with a teaspoon of salt. What processor speed, backlight full or down, hard disk parked or used, watching DVD (ie. spinning DVD drive) or not, etc.
I had a really old laptop that I took the hard disk out of and replaced with a compact flash card running windows 3.1 and wordperfect. That sucker lasted ages on an old battery.
We have a user here that has one of the originals. If I remember reading the materials on the original, you were NOT supposed to use a laptop resting on the unit. The heat coming out of the bottom of a laptop could damage the unit. That's probably when they changed the form factor was to prevent people from using it exactly the way you've described. The original was designed with that form factor to easily slide into a laptop bag, not sit under the laptop while in use.
Yeah apple actually tells people to do this as soon as you get your laptop(mine is an iBook G4). They call it calibrating the battery or some such. They also tell you to do it if your charge isn't lasting as long as it used to. Its a pretty neat trick and it makes sense.
"We Don't Need No Truthless Heros!" - Project 86
For some reason the FAA and TSA wouldn't let my wife take a lead-acid battery on the plane to power her CPAP machine for a 16 hour overnight flight. The NCharge-II battery pack was more than enough to run the device.
All those damn tips came in handy after all because sooner or later you can find one with the right shape and a close enough voltage.
The TSA wont let you take wet cell batteries on at all. FAA will let you take "non spillable" batteries, but you're not allowed to actually use them during the flight.
Something like the NCharge battery packs with their dry cell batteries can be quite a godsend.