Hasta La Gadget!

Sanyo’s new “Eneloop Stick Booster” takes two of technology’s ubiquities, USB and batteries, and puts them together into a sleek aluminum stick.

Sanyo’s Eneloop batteries are already a smart choice when looking for rechargeables. Not only do they come fully charged and ready to use, unlike your regular Ni-MH cells, neither do they leak their charge slowly over the days and weeks. Ever thrown a set of charged batteries into a flashgun only to find them empty? That won’t happen with the Eneloops.

The Stick Booster is a charger in a tube. Hook it up to a USB port to top-off the two supplied AAs. From here you can put those batteries into a camera or other device, or hook an iPod or cellphone up to the USB-out directly, offering a versatile emergency charge. There’s also a switch on the side that lets the batteries discharge a higher current for particularly thirsty gadgets like the iPhone.

The Stick Booster will be available in December for ¥3,100, or $35.

Product page [GeekStuff4U via Akihabara News]

Nowadays, everything comes with a rechargeable battery, but who knew that getting long battery life could get soooo confusing? Here are 10 expert-backed tips to keep you from running low on the juice:

1. Since a battery should never be 100% full or 100% empty, you should charge it then discharge it in sequence ideally ranging between 80% to 20%. Start by charging for 12 minutes, then running it down, then charge it for 11 minutes then run it down, and so on. Confused? Just use this handy formula: n!=C(n,k)/r! where n can’t equal r, and k never reaches zero. Simple!

2. If you use a phone or laptop without first charging its battery fully, you will die.

3. A lot of battery experts warn of the memory effect, but it’s not really an “effect.” It’s just their way of saying “Remember to charge your batteries!”

4. Batteries run better when cold. The easiest way to do this is to find a refrigerated warehouse or meat locker, befriend the night watchman, and do all your work from there. ($20 bribes usually work.)

5. If your laptop battery gets hot enough to sear tuna, step away. Check your fridge for tuna. If no tuna in fridge, run to the supermarket to buy tuna. Don’t worry, as long as you don’t unplug your laptop, the battery will stay hot while you are gone.

6. When putting your laptop into storage, take out the battery. Wrap the extracted battery in a well oiled cloth and place it in a clay pot. Bury the pot in a hayfield. Any will do, but it’s best if there’s a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end. The battery should keep fresh for up to six months that way. If you’re worried about finding it again, just mark your spot with a rock that has no earthly business in a hayfield. I favor black volcanic glass.

7. If your battery is about to run dry, take it out and blow on it. I have no idea why this works, but it totally does.

8. If your battery does die, you can always make your own: A potato theoretically has enough “potential energy” stored inside to power a laptop for a full hour—the trick is knowing where to stick the wires. Just ask a third grader. One tip: The potato must not be baked.

9. You should never confuse your batteries. Here’s an easy way to keep them apart in your head: Lithium Ion batteries explode, Nickel Cadmium destroys the environment, and Lead Acid batteries are more corrosive than the Alien Queen’s blood (plus, they contain lead). You can eat Lithium Ferro Phosphate batteries.

10. People may tell you to carry a battery-life extender in your bag, but the secret there is, it’s just another battery. What do I recommend? Jumper cables.

What could be a better feeling than beating a world record? Beating your own world record. The Tesla Roadster has put an extra exclamation mark on its world-conquering single-charge antics by raising the bar from 241 miles back in April to an even more impressive 313 this week. As you can see in that homemade “world record” sign above, that’s 501 kilometers in metric terms, or pretty much the exact distance between Paris and Amsterdam. The Global Green Challenge in Australia — where this feat was achieved — allows only production battery-powered vehicles to compete, meaning that the new record is down to driver skill on the part of one Mr. Simon Hackett, and not some newfound techno mojo. Kinda makes those long recharge times seem like less of a burden, no?

Tesla Roadster keeps on rollin’, goes 313 miles on single charge originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Hundreds of iPhone customers are reporting shorter battery life after upgrading to the latest iPhone OS (3.1). Apple appears to have acknowledged the issue, as the company’s help desk is contacting some affected customers to diagnose the root of the problem.

In Apple’s support forums, nearly 500 posts complain about the iPhone’s shortened battery life after upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1. The AppleCare help desk is contacting some of these forum members with an 11-part questionnaire, according to The iPhone Blog.

The questionnaire includes queries about possible power suckers such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and push e-mail. Question 10, for example, reads, “When you notice a power drop, does it seem to be a legitimate power drop, or rather an issue with the battery icon indicator?”

The note also contains a file that installs an unsigned profile for battery-life logging on the iPhone. If users opt to install the profile, their battery-life logs can be synced with iTunes, and they can request that those logs be sent back to Apple for inspection, according to The iPhone Blog.

Are you an iPhone user? Let us know in the poll below whether you’ve been experiencing shorter battery life since upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1, or share your anecdotes and possible solutions in the comments below.

Meanwhile, I’ll share my own experience: I haven’t been actively monitoring battery life with iPhone OS 3.1 in particular, but I have noticed some quirks with the general 3.0 OS. At one point my battery life dropped from 100 percent to 20 percent in about 10 minutes. I looked into the problem and saw reports from several users that the problem was a corrupt iTunes backup of your iPhone.

The solution? Unfortunately it involved doing a clean wipe of the iPhone, setting it up as a new device and re-synchronizing my entire iTunes library. (You can do all of this by clicking the “Restore” button in iTunes, then selecting the option to set up your iPhone as a new device. After that, all you have to do is synchronize your iTunes library.) In the course of this process I lost my entire SMS history, my voicemails and library of photos snapped with the iPhone. That sucked, but a clean restore fixed the problem.

See Also:

• Everything You Wanted to Know About iPhone 3.1 But Were Afraid to Ask
• Battery Tests Confirm iPhone 3GS Improvements, But Complaints Linger

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

This article was written on March 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Last year when Sony dealt with a massive recall of notebook batteries, it was a costly situation they had to deal with. In fact, the recall cost nearly $444 million after the 10 million batteries were taken care of! While Lenovo won’t have 10 million batteries to deal with, they do have 205,000 batteries that have been recalled.

Thus far, five different customers complained about their battery over-heating. This came after the notebook had been dropped or sustained abuse (that’s the first problem!). The batteries shouldn’t be a threat if there hasn’t been abuse, but still need to be replaced.

Here’s what you should look for to determine if your battery is recalled:

• Sold between November 2005 and February 2007 as an option for certain Think Pad IBM Notebook PCs
• The PC would be in series R,T, or Z
• Part number is FRU P/N 92P1131
• Affects nine-cell, extended life version
• Manufactured by Sanyo Electric of Japan

To get your free replacement, Lenovo has set up a DailyTech

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Dell Isn’t The Only One Recalling BatteriesMicrosoft Has Plans To Produce A ‘Cooler’ Xbox 360MacBook Overheating Caused By Manufacturer ErrorXbox 360 Wheel Recall Due to OverheatingLenovo Takes a Jab at the MacBook Air