How reliable and useful are external batteries for laptops and why does battery life still matter?

How reliable and useful are external batteries for laptops and why does battery life still matter?

Still matter if you can buy external batteries.

Do external batteries for laptops actually give you a significant amount of power in practice and are they compatible with most computers in practice?

External Laptop Batteries for PC, Mac & Tablets at TheBatteryGeeks.com

So of these, what would you pick if you wanted a battery for your laptop in your backpack?

What do I need to know about volts, watts, milliamps, and not overheating in simplest terms possible?

 

Personally I have on most cases found those external batteries a bit gimmicky and on many occasions more trouble than they are worth. on the flip side docked battery slices which are made to integrate onto many business class laptops have been phenominal for when you really need to maximize your unplugged time.


as for what you need to know. you have to be able to meet spec of your laptop charger and a quick guideline is to match external voltage ( usually about 19V ) and the amps supplied. if the battery is rated in output watts for example 65W remember that Volts x Amps = watts. never go with a lower wattage than your recommended charger or what the power requirements on your laptop state.

 

So let's say you have a windows 8.1 bay trail tablet/convertible. And you want to charge it. A device that small will not have a flip side docked battery slices.

What are your options then?

What do you mean gimmicky and more trouble than they are work? Do you have to end up buying alot of adapters to get not that much power?

 

OK for tablets it depends on how it charges, I have an ASUS T100 which charges off of Micro USB, so I have one of those high capacity smartphone battery packs incase I need it, Specifically a Patriot Fuel+, the tablet gives me 9-12 hours actual use as it is but it has come in handy on a few occasions.
http://www.patriotmemory.com/product/detail.jsp?prodline=6&catid=100&prodgroupid=264&id=1404

but for laptops and devices that use higher draw chargers/ external batteries I find them gimmicky because of adaptors, cables that break or fail, and the fact they take up a lot of space in my bag or travel case for in many cases only a couple of hours of additional power because of all the inefficiencies of converting the DC power back and for the from one voltage to another by buck/boost transformers.

 

Reason why I prefer laptop in the old fashion way where battery is detacheable. I carry one spare on top of the main one and the extra 3-cell in the media bay of my Latitude. Maintaining them is a bit of a headache but its worth it for computing may hours off the grid. And yes, stick to the original battery instead of those cheap aftermarket ones.