Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

I’ve got portable chargers for my cell phone, portable chargers for my iPod, portable chargers for my little video recorder, portable chargers for my AA batteries… The only thing I don’t have a portable charger for (besides my laptop) is my DSLR, because it takes those annoyingly square 7.4 volt battery packs that require their own special charger. Energizer is about to solve this problem with a little clip that has teeth to attach to the contacts of battery packs of any size. The other end can be plugged into a USB port, and if I may say, props to Energizer for not making it some kind of proprietary plug.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that you can’t charge a 7.4 volt DSLR battery out of a 5 volt USB port, which means that you’ll have to instead use one of Energizer’s new line of XPAL universal power packs (out next month) that come with 8.4 volt outputs. Nothing wrong with that, though… The battery packs looks pretty useful, and some of them even come with solar chargers. We should be seeing a review unit sometime in the near future, and we’ll keep you updated.

[ Energizer XPAL Power ] VIA [ Gearlog ]

By Chris Scott Barr

If you’ve got an HP laptop that you purchased between August 2007 and March 2008, you might want to stop and pay attention for a minute. Yes, I know there’s plenty of other fun stuff to look at, but if you value your legs and the pants you’re wearing, stop for a moment. HP is recalling some 70,000 laptop batteries due to overheating issues. Apparently there have been incidents of property damage with some of these, so it would be worth checking into. The models affected are listed below, more info after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Evan Ackerman

We’re big big fans of rechargeable batteries, but they’re not usually something that you think of powering devices that suck up a lot of electricity over a long period of time. Something like, oh, I don’t know, a laptop. But it looks like netbooks are just barely low power enough to achieve a decent amount of on-time using a bunch of rechargeable AA batteries, and NorhTec has taken the first step with their Gecko Edubook, which uses eight integrated NiMH batteries for power. More info and specs, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Evan Ackerman

Yes, I know that this thing is most likely not real, especially since it’s from a company called “Naivetek.” The idea is you stick D batteries in one side, and it charges up AA or AAAs on the other. It sounds silly, kind of like the solar powered flashlight, but it actually could end up being something useful.

Disposable D batteries have a typical capacity of 12,000 mAh, whereas rechargeable AA batteries normally have capacities of 2,500 mAh or less. It looks like this thing can hold maybe 4 D batteries on one side, and 2 AAs on the other. So hypothetically, that gives you 48,000 mAh capacity with which you could recharge your AA batteries 9 or 10 times. Say you’re off camping for a week and need to keep your camera running… Would you rather carry 10 sets of AAs, or 1 set of AAs, 4 Ds, and this charger?

[ Flickr ] VIA [ TechEBlog ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Even though they’re still in the prototype stage and not terribly efficient at this point, I still think these solar powered rechargeable batteries are a brilliant idea. Designed by Knut Karlsen, the SunCats are basically a set of old NiMH rechargeable batteries wrapped in a flexible Photo Voltaic cell created by the Institute for Energy Technology. When the batteries are drained, you simply leave them sitting in a windowsill or anywhere with ample sunlight and they’ll recharge themselves.

The PV cells were simply glued onto the batteries and wired up using a conductive silver pen and some flat wires scavenged from a broken canon lens. At the moment they only provide a weak trickle charge to the batteries, but Knut envisions a second version with built-in capacitors and electronics to make the charging process more efficient.

[ Notes from Knut - The SunCat Batteries - DIY prototypes ] VIA [ Inhabitat ]

By Evan Ackerman

Fuji EnviroMAX batteries are just like any other disposable batteries, except that they are actually disposable. Like, you can throw them out in the trash. Not that you should necessarily DO that, but the point is that (unlike other batteries) they don’t have any toxic elements in them. So you can feel less guilty or something. You’ll be able to buy EnviroMAX batteries in AA, AAA, C, D, etc. at hardware stores and other major retailers (like Target and CVS) by the end of March, and here’s the important bit: they’ll cost the same as traditional non-reusable batteries that are made from pure unfiltered evil. Oh, and independent testing apparently shows that the environmentally friendly ones last about 15% longer. So why not buy them, right?

Incidentally, the Fuji rep and I had a bit of an argument about whether it’s better to buy these and toss them in the trash or buy rechargeables (which have all kinds of nasty heavy metals in them) and use far, far less of them… And let’s just say we didn’t exactly reach a consensus. Oh well.

[ GreenFuji ]

By Evan Ackerman

Ultracapacitors, or supercapacitors, are the new batteries. They recharge very, very, very quickly, the charge lasts for a long time, and you can keep on cycling them for tens of thousands of charge cycles. Kinda puts conventional rechargeable batteries to shame. Except that conventional rechargeable batteries are cheap and everywhere, but let’s just ignore that for the moment and talk about the 5.11 Light For Life Tactical Series UC3.400 flashlight, which has an ultracapacitor built right in. A 90 second charge will power this flashlight at 90 lumens for a 90 minutes, which equals a wicked impressive 23.5 hours out of 24 of on-time. You can recharge it 50,000 times (that’s a charge a day until the year 2143) with virtually no battery degradation or memory effects, but the LEDs themselves are only good for about 5 years, or until 2014. How disappointing. I really could have used 135 solid years of illumination.

The UC3.400 costs $170 (on pre-order for delivery in 2009), which is not so bad if you spread it out over a century or so (you’ll actually save about 40% over similar flashlights). It’s one of the very few ultracapacitor devices we’ve seen, and they’re certainly not cheap. But I’d totally pay a premium to endow my cell phone (or my laptop, for that matter) with a battery that recharged in 90 seconds and had no memory effect, wouldn’t you?

[ 5.11 Tactical ] VIA [ FlashlightNews.org, the world's only flashlight industry news website ]

By Evan Ackerman

I don’t have a USB volcano, but if I did, I bet I’d want to use it all the time, everywhere. I can do that with this USB power bar, which has a rechargeable 2200 mAh lithium battery inside plus a 5 volt USB power port to charge all your USB stuff. It also has a power level indicator, and a flashlight thrown in for good measure. A variety of included adapters let you charge iPods and common cell phones, and you should be able to charge things at least once or twice from dead. Once you’ve run the power bar’s battery out, you can recharge it from a USB port on your computer, or from another power bar. It’s $32 from USB Geek, which isn’t that much to pay to have a volcano available anytime, anywhere. There’s no telling when it might come in handy…

[ USB Geek ] VIA [ Geekalerts ]

By Evan Ackerman

Although I’m in no way complaining about my MSI Wind’s 6 cell battery and the legitimate 5-6 hours of productive (or whatever) on-time it provides, it’s not always enough. I guess there’s a market for this all day (8+ hour) computing thing, because Lion Battery/Mugen Power is about six weeks away from releasing a 9-cell battery for the Wind. There’s nothing sexy about it (they just stuck 3 extra battery cells on there, from what I can tell) but it packs a whopping 7800 mAh, which should be good for 8+ hours with no trouble at all. Pricing is TBA, but it may actually retail for less than a replacement 6-cell (which costs like $140), since the 6-cell has to go through an MSI distributor while Lion Battery is selling the 9-cell straight to you.

Personally, I think the 6-cell is an excellent compromise between portability, longevity, and (of course) sexiness, but if you’re one of those suckers who feels the need to work an 8 hour day, the 9-cell battery might be yet another reason to get yourself a Wind.

[ Lion Battery ] VIA [ MSIWind.net Forums ]