We’ve come to rely on blinking dots and obscure icons to tell when a device’s battery is low, but the human face is just so much easier to read and decipher. You wouldn’t want to have to flip a baby over and check a set of LEDs to see if it was happy, so the expressive face on this Mr Pow backup battery reflecting its charge level just makes sense.
Electric car maker Tesla wants a cheaper, faster way to produce the lithium ion batteries that power its cars, and the company has settled on a gargantuan solution: the so-called "gigafactory" that, if all goes as planned, will crank out more lithium ion batteries than the entire world produced in 2013.
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It can be hard to choose a backup battery when the market is as flooded as Bluetooth speakers and iPhone cases have become. Manufacturers are now finding ways to include added value with their emergency power supplies, like Cerevo’s new EneBrick that can turn your favorite USB keyboard into a wireless Bluetooth accessory for your tablet or smartphone.
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This article was written on May 15, 2007 by CyberNet.
There is a lot of talk going around the Web regarding Vista’s Aero interface eating up precious battery life on laptops. Today the Windows Vista Blog responded to the concerns that a lot of people had by saying:
First off, yes, as Dwight correctly points out, the Aero theme drives the GPU harder and therefore uses more power. But in the big picture, it’s really not that much more. For example, the display on most laptops will consume somewhere between 15-25% of your “power budget” when you are running on battery. Nevertheless, in our testing we’ve seen that turning on Aero consumes only about 1-4% more of battery life. In terms of making your battery last longer, turning off Aero will not go very far while at the same time costing you some of the cool features that make Windows Vista fun to use, such as Flip 3D, taskbar previews, window transparency and so on.
So they do admit that having Aero enabled does cause slightly more of a battery drain, but they planned ahead and implemented something to reduce the battery consumption in Vista. If you put your laptop into Power Saver mode (left-click on the battery icon in the System Tray), and then unplug the computer you’ll notice that Vista automatically disabled the transparency feature. All of the other Aero features still remain in tact, such as the Flip 3D and Taskbar previews, but some of the eye candy has been removed. It might not be much but this does indeed save battery power.
If that’s still not enough for you there is an application that someone made to help even more. Whenever this program is running it will disable Aero all together (no Flip 3D, Taskbar previews, transparency, etc…) as soon as your computer switches to battery power. This is supposed to maximize your battery life, but from my personal experience it doesn’t really help that much.
I definitely recommend switching into Power Saver mode if you are ever trying to conserver battery power. When I do that with my PC I end up with more battery life than when I run XP on it. Of course there is always the High Performance mode that you can switch into if you really want to see how fast you can drain your battery. 🙂
Note: With a fully charged battery in Balanced mode (and running dual-monitors with full screen brightness) I get an estimated 3 hours and 18 minutes of battery life. Switching over to Power Saver mode, still with full screen brightness, I am estimated to get 4 hours and 4 minutes.
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
Panasonic is looking to expand its energy presence, with the company’s head of Energy Solutions Center Hiroshi Edo Hanafusa announcing at the Cleantech Group forum that the company is on … Continue reading
The only thing worse than the cold and snow of winter is when you’re stuck in the middle of it waiting for a bus. So to make the experience a little less awful, Duracell turned a transit shelter in Montreal into a giant battery that powered a set of warmth-providing heaters.
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This article was written on October 22, 2009 by CyberNet.
Wireless everything… It’s one of those clichés that usually come to mind when talking about the future of technology. While wireless has seen plenty of success with the invention of the mobile phone and WiFi networks, our computers still have a truckload of wires attached to them. Why is it that many of us still prefer wired mice and keyboards? And, more importantly, what could be done to resolve these issues?
We’ve got your keystrokes
Ever thought about how your wireless keyboard communicates with your computer? Your keystrokes are sent to the receiver so that your computer knows what you’re typing. But what if a hacker builds a custom-made receiver with a signal amplifier to record keystrokes from random keyboards in reach? Your passwords could get stolen without you ever knowing it. Just imagine what would happen if our monitors were wireless…
Possible solution: the industry should do for wireless peripherals what WEP/WPA did for wireless networks.
Battery inconveniences
Every once and a while, you have to replace the batteries in your wireless peripherals. If you’re sitting one foot away from your computer, it may not be worth the hassle of changing the batteries in your wireless mouse when wired mice are satisfied with plain old USB juice.
Possible solution: now that we’re advancing in wireless power transmission research, we may be able to get rid of those batteries sooner that we think.
It’s not green
Wireless communication needs extra power, even if the transmitter and the receiver are close to each other. Obviously, this is not eco-friendly. You can often find information about your device’s energy consumption on its back or in its manual.
Possible solution: while making devices more efficient can help, this only works to a certain degree. We may have to wait for energy to become greener before this problem can get ironed out.
Wireless signals cause cancer. No, they do not. Yes, they do.
There’s a lot of debate about possible health issues with our increasingly wireless lives. Contradicting studies have proved and rejected theories about wireless signals being a cause of cancer. The sad thing about this is that the only thing we can do to solve this dispute is wait for about twenty years to see how wireless technology has impacted our health. Then we’ll finally know if wireless is indeed the new tobacco.
[image via Flickr]
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
When it comes to the numerous remote controls as well as children’s toys around the home, many of them tend to rely on the classic AA and AAA batteries. In fact, what were some of your favorite toys that ran on AA batteries? Mine was the Nintendo Game Boy, where its monochrome glory certainly helped me go through mountains of AA batteries over the years. It was a huge relief then, to see Nintendo slim down the Game Boy in addition to lowering the number of batteries required for it to run by half. Having said that, here we are today with Panasonic announcing the introduction of their AA and AAA Platinum Power batteries.
These alkaline battery cells are capable of protecting power for up to 10 years, as they boast of enhanced storage capabilities in addition to safe, stable power features. The all new Platinum Power AA and AAA battery cells were specially designed for high drain devices that have greater power consumption, where among them include radio controlled toys and game controllers. Not only that, you can also opt to make use of Platinum Power batteries in everyday medium and low drain devices such as flashlights, remote controls and thousands of other products, without worrying about them running out of juice anytime soon.
I personally stick to using Sanyo’s Eneloop batteries, and my first set that was purchased more than half a dozen years ago still operate just fine until today. I suppose rechargeables could be the way to go if you want to go green, but if you need long running power on the spot without having to go through the hassles of recharging and its pesky wait time, then the Panasonic Platinum Power batteries would fit the bill perfectly. It comes packaged in standard four and eight pack sizes, in addition to a wide variety of multi-packs with up to 24 cells or more. The asking price for the four pack AA size will cost $3.99 a pop.
Press Release
[ Panasonic Platinum Power batteries introduced copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
A team of Stanford scientists recently made a breakthrough. After years of trying to create a new generation of lithium-ion batteries that use energy-efficient silicon to hold a charge, they found the secret to the winning design in an unlikely place: pomegranates.
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Fourteen cm in height and eight around, the world’s first battery looked more like primitive pre-Columbian art than an amazing piece of ancient technology. Although most experts agree that the device produced electricity, there is little consensus on what that power was intended to do.
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