If even the longest-lasting laptop doesn’t meet your needs when you’re working away from the mains, there is a simple solution – buy one or more spare batteries. Simple, maybe, but not necessarily convenient – most laptops batteries are an awkward shape to carry around, you’ll have to use the laptop to recharge them and should you change laptops, you’ll need to change batteries too. That’s where the APC Universal Notebook Battery 70 comes in – it’s an external battery pack that’s not only easy to carry, it works with most laptops, too.

The Universal Notebook Battery 70 (UNB) looks just like a laptop tray and that’s just how you use it – with the laptop sat on top. At 30 x 21.9mm, it's best-suited to an ultra-portable, but it's fine for use with all but the largest 17in laptops if you don't mind a little overhang. Best of all,at just 850g, it won’t add much weight to a laptop bag.

Of course the problem with any device designed to plug into a laptop’s power socket is that power sockets come in all shapes and sizes. The UNB compensates for this by coming with nine different power tip adaptors that suit a wide range of laptops. All the major manufacturers are listed on the devices’ compatibility guide, but as long as you have a laptop that accepts a cylindrical (and not some exotic multi-pin or rectangular type), one of the tips is almost certain to work. A switch at the rear of the UNB sets the voltage at increments between 15 and 20V.

The UNB sits between a laptop’s mains adapter and the laptop – something that’s achieved with a long, stiff three-way cable. One end of the cable plugs into the UNB, the other two plug into the mains adapter and the laptop via the appropriate power tip adaptor. The arrangement is a little ungainly and the three-way cable needs to be tied neatly together to stop it getting tangled, but it does at least mean that the UNB will work with any laptop power socket position.

The UNB charges when connected to the laptop mains adapter, but the laptop doesn’t need to be plugged in at the same time. When away from the mains, the laptop draws power from the UNB first, then from its internal battery – so you can put the UNB away once it’s been drained. The only catch is that the laptop thinks that it’s still running on mains power when plugged into the UNB, so you’ll need to manually activate the appropriate power profile to eke the most out of it.

Our test laptop with an Intel Core Duo low-voltage U2500 processor lasted for two hours and 34 minutes when running a set of application benchmarks on battery power. When plugged into the UNB, it ran lasted for five hours and 25 minutes – an additional two hours and 51 minutes. Just over double the battery life is good, but not great – but bear in mind that our application benchmarks work the laptop much harder than an ordinary user might and you can add an hour to both scores for typical daily use.

So if you're looking to extend your laptop's battery life and want a flexible extra battery, the UNB is certainly worth considering. It doesn't cost much more than a typical laptop battery and the provision of an on-board USB port means that it can recharge other mobile devices too.

APC Universal Notebook Battery 70

Specifications

Comments

Add New Search

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Website:
Title:
UBBCode:	-color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.25

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

---

Bookmark with: