Power to the People!

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Yeay for the Überbattery! I charged it up and was using it this evening. It petered out after about 5 hours, kicking back to the laptop's built-in battery (which has about 4 hours)–BUT, that is likely to be due to:
* The whole time, I was listening to a streaming MP3 radio station over the wireless network card (which eats up a lot of power because of the constant wireless network traffic as well as the MP3 decoding)
* Compiled a number of hefty things, including the OS X/Aqua version of emacs
* Burned a CD (5 minutes)
* Burned a DVD (45 minutes)
Maybe tomorrow, I will give it a more realistic test without the streaming radio and burning.

The whole battery setup is pretty neat. The battery itself is “generic.” That is, it will work with virtually any laptop. There is a “universal” plug in the back that fits any of their $20 adapters. Each adapter is designed for a specific brand of laptop and serves as a way to both charge the batter with your existing power cable and power the laptop. So, with the Powerbook adapter, there is a thingey I plug my standard Apple Powerbook charger (the one that came with the computer) into, and a cable that goes from that into the laptop. No extra charger or anything. The laptop's internal battery charges first, and when that is done, the external batter charges. There is no fumbling around with multiple Powerbook batteries–which has been my big gripe with extra laptop batteries because you never remember to charge them. You generally have to play musical batteries to ensure everything is charged. There is also a secondary port on the front of the battery. For that one, you can get a charger/power cable for all sorts of cellphones and PDAs. The whole thing is a well thought out design and really does not take up too much space in my laptop backpack, considering the only extra is the battery (because the charger is the one I have always had for the laptop).

Posted in: Dear Diary

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