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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.
Newer laptop batteries are making these sort of gadgets not-so-nifty.
I always felt that my batteries did better after a couple of charges. Maybe the new one was too new?
If all you say is true about the product(discounting a shape thign as i can imagine , difrent folks blah) then this is horrifc behaviour by the company . . .
Releasing an inferior sequal is bad enough in the entertainment world , in the hardware world though its down right lunacy
a new version of a piece of hardware is expected to improve it in a few key areas or perhaps in one drasticaly with a slight loss in another(such as doubling the battery life on an mp3 player but reducing the capacity by 10%)
having something with a significantly lesser battery life and no notable advantages is a confusing at best unless they decided to sell it for a significantly lesser sum
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
yeah, airport security sometimes look at you when you have a battery pack you soldered together yourself, but no one has stopped me yet.
Leave the battery in the bag and plug in over Wi-Fi!
Sometimes you just need the right technology for the job at hand.
http://www.planetnz.com/palmheads/tandy.php
-- John.
I checked out the compatibility guide for the device (which is in a PDF file for no reason) to see if my laptop was compatible. They have a huge list of devices, and there appears to be some sort of color coding to the whole thing, but they never explain it. It looks like if it is red, it's not compatible, but they never explain what the multitude of other colors mean in the PDF file.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
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.
Of course there's not much else I can do - it's hard to argue with a "review" that's basically just a long rant about why the reviewer doesn't like the form factor. It doesn't even make any sense to complain about it; the form factor is just about the easiest thing to find out about *before* you buy the product - even if you bought it online.
Here's a second opinion, for what it's worth: I've owned the N-Charge II for several months now, and I'm extremely happy with it. I can't comment on the differences in battery life, since I never owned the first version, but I get ten hours total of productive time from the internal battery of my Vaio X505 plus both parts of the N-Charge II.
Which brings up what's probably the most important difference in this new version, oddly enough not even mentioned in the "review": The N-Charge II splits in two, letting you carry just half of it around if you only need half the battery life. This is perfect for me, since the total of 6 hours which I get with just one part is enough for most flights I'm on, and the smaller bulk avoids the silly feeling of carrying around a battery that's heavier and bigger than the ultraportable I paid dearly to get so light and tiny.
As for the form factor, I just slip it into the seatback pocket when on a plane, and otherwise I keep it in my bag. I got the extension cord so I can keep the bag on the floor while working on a desk or on my lap. But of course, if you absolutely must keep your external battery directly under your laptop, by all means get one of the competing products. Maybe next time you should read the specifications before ordering something.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
if airlines would put electrical outlets along the aisles for people to plug their laptops in.
Most empower adapters also double as a car charger as well.
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.
Unfortunately, Li-Ion Batteries degenerate with time, from the date of manufacture, regardless if they are used or not. A Li-Ion battery will only perform well for a 2-3 years.
See: www.batteryuniversity.com for more information. There is also great advice for dealing with "Battery Gauges" (They calibrate on a full discharge)
The store link posted earlier contains CLEAR descriptions of each of the units, the first generation unit is available in BOTH 5 hour or 10 hour versions. The second generation unit provides 5 hours or a total of 10 WITH EXPANSION UNIT. I'm assuming the author had the old 10 hour version, about 300$, and purchased the new second generation base unit (rated to run for 5 hours), which is about $150. To get the same duration as the $300 (10hr) first generation unit, you would have to buy the $150 second generation unit, and add on to it the expander which is another $150. Store with info: http://store.yahoo.com/valencetech-store/
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.
Great, maybe I can finally get some sleep while I use one of these to power my girlfriend's... erm, nevermind.
The only reason you should fully discharge a battery is to calibrate the battery meter. Full discharges have a negative effect on battery life. http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
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.
Interestingly enough, my Olivetti M10 has always been capable of 20 hours work from 4 AA zinc-carbon batteries.
And while you might think I am justkidding, I say to hell with increased CPU performance, when they are not capable of making laptops that would last longer from a single recharge. They should be called lap-burners, with all that heat they dissipate. You'd think that, with increased performance per CPU cycle, some laptop manufacturer would havedivided the CPU frequency, to save energy at the expense of performance - often NOT the main property of a laptop.
Sigged!
Just to clarify, I wasn't comparing it to a single unit, I had the primary and the expansion pack.
Also, my internal battery was fully charged.
A buncha "D" cells. Yes, a buncha "D" cells. What do you think are in some of those nifty sealed battery packs, anyway, these days?
a ble-batteries.php
http://www.thomas-distributing.com/cta-d-recharge
has rechargables, Ni-MH "D" cells rated at 12 amp-hours; yes, 12,000 milliamp-hours each, if you hafta be Green. However, the Real Deal, eTanium(TM) is rated at 21.5 AH each:
http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/x95.pdf
and even your buy-them-at-three-AM-from-7-11 variety alkalines develop 20.5 AH
http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/e95.pdf
Buy once, run down, throw them away. Cheap, cheap, cheap. You don't need a gauge; your spendy laptop has one.
Add two of these
http://tinyurl.com/4m6my
a little soldering, the right length of cord & the right-sized connector tip
http://tinyurl.com/5x4om
an Bob's Yer Uncle.
Don't add more than you need, and jump across the contacts if you only need seven cells to make the optimal voltage, instead of going over your laptop's rated voltage by more than a volt. The voltage regulator would just have to step down the power, which makes extra heat in your laptop, which slows down your processor, and accelerates battery drain.
Seven of the el cheapo "D" cells plus a jumper wire give me 20.5 AH for $10, plus $2 in parts and the connector I scrounged off a blown power supply. That's 10.7 times the capacity of the standard battery (2 hour run time) on my Fujitsu Lifebook. Geez, fly to Oz on those suckers. Then, I can go to a 7-11 there, buy another set of "D" cells, and have juice for the flight home.
If you're neither handy nor handsome, Mouser
http://tinyurl.com/6wq7g
has every power connector in the Twelve Colonies,
http://scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast
everything the Lords of Kobol ever designed. Or, pay $10 to The Shack for the aforementioned iGo tip, cuz, well, iGo tips are right there in the store, where the rest of your parts are.
Too bulky? You can downsize it to "C" cells, or even "AA" cells, as seven "AA" batteries exceed the capacity of my spendy, storebought factory battery pack by 50%.
But, then, I'm a ham, one of the crash test dummies of the electronics world, and we do these things so you don't have to.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA