Latitude secondary batteries

The Latitudes all have the capability of carrying a second battery in what Dell refers to as the "modular bay". What is the modular bay? Is it where the CD/DVD drive goes?

 

You are exactly right. The modular battery is interchangeable with the optical drive or alternative HD.

Since the 6 cell gives about 3:30-3:40 you get an option for additional time with a modular battery. I opted for the 9 cell since I wouldn't compromise the optical drive and adds only 1/2 lb.

 

that is unfortunate...it makes it impossible to take a long trip and watch DVDs on the road...o well

 

e1505 have the same option? Im curious.. would be good for people like me who normally learned you rip the cd to the HDD so you wouldnt use extra battery life when playing games like starcraft or other cd required games. Then just put in the 2nd battery on trips and so..

 

Not necessarily. Your solution would be to use an external drive, like a Firelite.

Take your respective movies and make an ISO image using DVD shrink and then load the ISOs to your hard drive under some arbitrary folder (ie My videos). Use Daemon tools to set up a virtual drive and run the ISO from the HD. Depending on the size of your internal HD, you can load a few movies and it saves more energy than using an optical but it does take time to do it. You can run it from the external HD or internal HD.

 

it's not unfortunate. watching dvds from the dvd drive is a bad idea because it eats battery faster than your HD. that's why savvy travellers know to rip their dvds to the HD.

 

well it certainly complicates things

 

does the optical drive really use that much batt power? I'd think usin alcohol 120% and the like would use a ton more power, as you'd be putting the hd and processor under a lot of stress.

 

it takes more power to spin the DVD drive than to spin the HD.

test it yourself

 

I think everybody here was saying to rip the movie to your HD before you leave, so they are already there and you can watch them easily on the road.

 

Movies - Rip them to HD to watch, alot of DVD to Divx or similar apps out there to do this.

Game CDs required to run, use "No cd cracks", copy your cd to a iso format and use something like alchol 120% or deamon tools to mount it in a virtual cd drive this way you are not forced to use a CD or wear it out! (Common played games you do.. this is better because you wont wear out your orig cd or drive always accessing it!)

Music Cds - Use Windows media to rip it to your HD in wma format or something like MusicMatch to rip to mp3 format.

Vola, You now for the trip took out the "Need" for a optical bay and can use the 2nd battery. Then once done with your trip, you can swap back out. =)

 

Unfortunately no, none of the current Inspirons have a modular optical bay anymore so they can't take a secondary battery. One more thing Dell took away from the Inspirons to differentiate between the Business Latitudes.