[ltp] Got the battery...charging now...

[Michelle Klein-Hass]

I did what I said I would, and got the Valence Technologies NChargeII battery.

This little battery pack is very ingenious. When you buy the tips (sold 
separately) for your charger, you use two: a tip for your AC adapter, and a 
tip for your laptop AC adapter jack. You get a bunch of them in the package. 
I now have tips for various and sundry Dell laptops as well as the tips for 
almost all the ThinkPads, starting with the legendary "Butterfly Keyboard" 
701 and continuing to the latest bad-boy T42. If I still had my 365X (living 
with a friend in the UK) I could power it off this battery.

The literature says this will last about 500 charge cycles. Charges are 
supposed to last for between 4 and 5 hours. It's a Lithium-Ion battery so I 
suppose all the precautions for LiIon applies. Don't let it run down 
completely, etc. etc. etc. It does have a little 1" connector for a piggyback 
battery pack, bringing the total battery use time to 8 to 10 hours.

If this means liberation from the tyranny of the power outlet, something that 
600-series owners know all too well, it's great. The only minus: the battery 
pack adds an extra 1.5 pounds (sorry, can't think of the Kg conversion right 
now) to one's lappie loadout. It doesn't bring my 600e into the territory of 
the almost 8-pound PowerBook G3 "Wallstreet PDQ" I once owned, but it's a 
little more to put in the papoose pack. I think I might be using the rolling 
lappie case more and more, even when not carrying my collection of 600e 
accessories.

I will report further on progress with the new battery as time permits.
-- 
Michelle Klein-Hass
Box 2273, Van Nuys, CA 91404-2273
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