NCharge Power System Review

Part 1:

Given the lack of in-seat power in a lot of planes, an upcoming 8 hour flight, and the Return of the King on DVD I decided to purchase an external battery and give it a try.

Armed with Battery Eater Pro, I plugged in my laptop, removed the AC and timed... 1 hour 38 minutes later, my toshiba Satelite 1955 stopped dead, not bad... that's 2 episodes of Stargate with room to spare. After figuring out how to get past the security device (Circuit City forgot to remove it) and downloading the manual (why didn't it come with it, in fact the general packing was lacking... which is why this is part 1) I plugged in the new NCharge power system and waited, I was very impressed with the charging mechanism, no extra cables, no new power supplys, simply put the right power tip onto the device and charge away.

4 hours later the lights finally went out indicating it was ready, but I was ready for sleep... tomorrow I figured tomorrow.

After noticing a whining noise coming from the connector to the battery (not sure that's so good) I plugged it back in, and it then took another 30 minutes before the lights all went out (why?) but once they did, I plugged it into my laptop, and set it off on Battery Eater pro.

A MISERABLE 45 minutes later, the battery meter on my laptop started to move and the internal battery drained, just a pathetic 45 minutes, from a battery that can give "upto 5 hours". I was shocked, maybe this was a return because it was bad/broken and circuit city just put it back onto the shelf (since they don't appear to ask questions about why you are returning a product) so return it I did, I'll pop down to Best Buy later today, pickup another one, and give it a try. I wonder if the second time will be the charm, or if this product is doomed to give me a pathetic 45 minutes.

Overall: Looks Great, design is nice (I like the modular aspect) charging is easy, weight isn't too bad (1.5lbs roughly) size is good, the only thing that sucked is the time it actually powered my laptop for, I was hoping for 2-3 hours, that would seem reasonable and I'd stick with it, under 1 hour was very poor.

Find a better way of life
www.marillion.com

 

Part II,

Well it didn't get any better, brand new battery (complete with packing which the first was missing some of) charged it fully, ran it with Battery Eater Pro, and once again, about an extra 45 minutes.

I'm going to try running it again with the Return of the King DvD's to see how far it goes through playing before it dies (as battery eater does use the battery quite fast, my main battery lasts at least 3 episodes of Stargate, but battery eater says it has 1:38 minutes as a maximum time, which is a good 45 minutes less than what it actually runs for.

Find a better way of life
www.marillion.com

 

Well, it lasted the entire first disc, and about half of the second disc before dying, not bad, but nothing like what it's supposed to allow. Given the expense this doesn't seem like a very good product, unless your laptop runs off minimal power settings. I've gone for a good 150watt power inverter instead, at 1/2 the price I'll see how that works for my transatlantic flight.


Find a better way of life
www.marillion.com

 

Yes...I tryed this unit as well, awhile back with my HP 4145 I think. Got about 30 to 45 minutes out of it while It kept trying to recharge the main battery. Everything they stated on the package was false. The version I had was a flat black light-weight battery pad that would fit perfectly right under a notebook. Of course they state never to do this because of heat issues. It was also hard to tell if it was fully charged or not. I will say that its a Great Ideal...but the outcome fails badly.

How about encoding the movies before hand into 'DIVX' files. You should get way more battery time since the drive won't be spining your power away. Otherwise, A second battery maybe your only hope.

You could try putting a couple car batterys in a bag and sneak it on board...just pray they don't leak and burn a hole through the plane at 35,000 Ft. That would be...bad[:0].

 

45 mins? that's sad...

 

If you rip the DVDs to your hard drive, they'll consume a lot less juice while playing.

http://www.mrbass.org/dvdrip/






I know things, things that could get me killed


Thinkpad T41:
* 1.6Ghz Pentium M * 768Mb Memory * 40Gb Hitach 7K60 * Panasonic UJ-845-B DVD+RW *