1/19/2010 02:53:00 AM
Callpod showcased the Chargepod V2 on Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010. The original Chargepod was one of the best multi-device charger on the market, now they've upgraded it with more power to not only charge your smaller gadgets but now laptops as well. The new multi-charger will let you travel with just one charger.
One side charges your laptop or Macbook, and another will charge up to three devices such as cell phones, MP3 players or Bluetooth headsets. The third side has a powered 3 port USB hub for music & data transfer and can connect peripherals such as keyboards and mice along with other gear to the computer attached to it. You can customize it to fit your device with adapters. It comes with a carrying case and a PC/Mac data cable and some adapters and you can buy others if your device isn’t among the ones included. This is a must have accessory for every power user.
1/13/2010 08:56:00 AM
Acer, Taiwan's biggest manufacturer of pc & laptops, is having to institute a safety recall on six models of laptop due to an overheating threat under specific conditions. Unlike other recall cases, the problem doesn't comes from the acer laptop battery but from a microphone cable which runs underneath where your left palm would normally sit on the laptops.
The overheating occurs if "extreme pressure" is applied repeatedly to that area of the laptop. We don’t know what classes as extreme pressure, but to have a recall means it can’t be that much force.
You will know it is happening as the laptop case will become deformed and if your palm is touching the laptop then it may get burned.
The affected units are Acer Aspire models AS3410, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ and AS3810TZG manufactured prior to September 15, 2009.
There are thought to be around 22,000 units that carry the overheating risk sold between June and October 2009 across multiple retailers.
To find out if your laptop suffers from this problem visit the Acer Voluntary Safety recall page and enter your 22-digit serial number or 11-digit SNID in the box provided.
1/07/2010 07:00:00 AM
1/6/2010, HP announced that they will add up to three USB 3.0 ports in the latest EliteBook business laptops "EliteBook 8540p" & "EliteBook 8540w workstation" to connect to external devices and peripherals. HP might be the earliest PC vendor to integrate USB 3.0 ports into laptops.
In practice, the bandwidth to transfer data is about 40 MiB/s for USB 2.0 and perhaps potentially 400 MiB/s or more for USB 3.0. This means the USB 3.0 technology will help laptops communicate at a much faster rate with high-speed external devices. For example, it will take about 3.3 secs for moving 1GB of data from a USB 3.0 flash drive to a laptop compared to 33 secs for USB 2.0.
Once we have new update for the battery for HP EliteBook 8540p & HP EliteBook 8540w, we will post it here. For any needs of HP laptop batteries, visit laptoptraveller.com and find a quality one for you!
1/06/2010 04:14:00 AM
Following the NB205 series of 10-inch netbooks, Toshiba now sports a new look, a full-size keyboard and 11 hours of battery life - mini NB305. For simple build quality and usability, the NB305 might be hard to beat.
In the netbook market, this mini NB305 distinguishes itself from competitors with a full-size keyboard and touchpad. With a 10.1-inch diagonal LED display and Intel Atom N450 processor, the battery life of Toshiba mini NB305 can achieve up to 11 hours.
Another thing worth to be noticed is that the mini NB305 offers a USB port with "sleep-and-charge" tech, which provide another way to charge your smart phone, MP3 player or other portable electronics, even when your laptop is turned off.
The detail spec rundown:
1/04/2010 05:49:00 PM
IBAM is an advanced battery monitor for laptops, which uses statistical and adaptive linear methods to provide accurate estimations of minutes of battery left or of the time needed until full recharge. This software relies on either APM, ACPI, SYSFS or PMU kernel support to access the battery status.
IBAM solves this problem by creating a battery and charge profile (as seen on the right for my old laptop) from which it can compute the actual times remaining. The red graph represents the battery cycle (where the laptop is running on battery), the x-axis represents the bios-minutes (now bios-percentage), the y-axis the actual average lengths of that minute (percentage) in seconds. As you can see the bios minute was about 50 seconds long from 200 minutes to 60 minutes, and only 10 seconds long from 40 minutes to 20 minutes. No wonder I was surprised that the battery was empty so soon…
The green graph shows the charge cycle, which seems to be a bit more useful, still the same technique can be used to give the user an idea how long the charge process will need.
As soon you created initial profiles you can get the similar graphs for your computer by using the option "--plot".
Of course the computer will consume more energy on a high load and IBAM does take this into account by determining a linear adaptive method for the current cycle.
Install IBAM in Ubuntu
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sudo apt-get install ibam
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This will install all the required packages
Using IBAM
Charging batteries:
Laptop is running on batteries
For more available options
Usage
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ibam [options]
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Options:
-h, --help displays this message
-v, --version displays software version
-b, --bios show bios apm guesses
-s, --seconds displays times in seconds
-c, --correctseconds displays changes in seconds
-r, --readonly no files will be updated
-a, --all show ALL information
--battery show battery time
--batteryadaptive show adaptive battery time
--batterybios show bios battery time guess
--percentbattery show battery percentage
--percentbios show bios percentage
--charge show charge time
--chargeadaptive show adaptive charge time
--percentcharge show charge percentage
--totalbattery show total battery time
--totalbatteryadaptive show adaptive total battery
--totalcharge show total charge time
--totalchargeadaptive show adaptive total charge
--hardlowlimit[=lim] show user defined hard lower percentage limit
[and set it to value
--softlowlimit[=lim] show automatic lower percentage limit
[and lower it to value
--plot[=profiles] use gnuplot to plot battery and charge graphs
and plot the last
--plotderivations[=profiles] same as above plus standard derivations
--import import V0.1 data from current directory
--profile enable additional yet unused profiling
--noprofile disable additional profiling
--credits to everyone contributing to ibam
1/04/2010 04:52:00 PM
Lenovo will bring their latest ThinkPad notebooks at upcoming CES 2010 in Las Vegas and one of the model is ThinkPad W510.
If the businessmen and women were getting nervous that the latest ThinkPads are getting a bit to consumer looking in design(such as ThinkPad Edge or ThinkPad X100e), not to worry since the ThinkPad W510 features to be the ultimate performance mobile workstation.
It's equipped with the latest Intel dual Core i7 processors to help speed up your workflow. The ThinkPad W510 sports a 15.6-inch "LED" display(and that's why the battery can last for up to 18 hrs) with resolution of 1440×900 pixel (16:10 aspect ratio), up to 16GB of ram, an optional NVIDIA Quadro FX 880m card, 4 USB ports, a choice of quad-core Core i7-720QM, Core i7-820Q or Core 2 Extreme i7-920XM processors. All in a chassis that weighs 5.89lbs and it can manage up to 18 hours of battery life with a 9 cell battery. The new laptops extend individual productivity with never before seen ThinkPad long battery life. Lenovo ThinkPad W510 notebook has priced at $1,599.
1/04/2010 09:21:00 AM
According to the reliable sources, an ex-China executive Lee Kai-fu has confirmed as many as 10 million units of Apple tablet computer which is apparently to be shipped in the first year of the release of the device.
"iSlate" which is the codename given to the iPhone-like Apple tablet computer is likely to be tagged below $1,000 with the physical dimension of the multitouch screen of 10.1 inch with three dimensional graphics.
It is rumoured to compete with the Amazon Kindle e-readers and low priced netbooks manufactured from Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Asustek. But its high price can act as deterrent for digital lovers. Also, the shipment of 10 million sales units seems to be quite high figure. It is almost two times the iPhone’s first year sales—which was 5.4 million units.
Since the product is yet not established, the figure seems pretty large but Apple’s a company that make unexpected occasionally happen.
1/02/2010 08:59:00 AM
Acer, the Taiwanese manufacturer, plans to roll out (surprise!) another new netbook, Acer Aspire One 532h, which sports Intel’s latest "Pine trail" Atom N450 processor and Windows 7. Comparing to the previous version, the battery for Acer Aspire One 531h stands for six hours, the Acer Aspire One 532h battery can stand for up to 10 hours for those on-the-go users.
As the Acer’s first netbook with Intel's Pine Trail platform, the new Aspire One netbooks offer mobile users some of the features and performance of a larger notebook, while providing a highly portable, compact design that's easy to take anywhere. Another interesting feature of the Acer Aspire One 532H is its more stylized exterior and a larger keyboard and trackpad.
The Aspire One 532h will be available in a variety of configurations. In red, black, blue, and white colors, but all will feature a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N450 processor and a 10.1-inch LED-backlight display. Will be available with two types of six-cell batteries: a 5600 mAh unit gives up to 10 hours of use, while a 4400 mAh offers up to 8 hours of usability.
Acer expects the Aspire One 532h’s will be available with MSPR from the $299 to $349 range. Perhaps, we expect to hear more on upcoming CES 2010.
