Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Some of you probably remember the Dell laptop that caught fire at a Japanese conference last year due to problems with the battery. Now the same type of lithium-ion battery is likely to blame for an iPod Nano that caught on fire in a man’s pocket as he was working at the Atlanta International Airport. While the reason that the Nano caught fire hasn’t been confirmed, it would be no surprise if it were due to the battery.

According to an Atlanta News Station who interviewed the man, the flames came up to his chest and lasted for about 15 seconds. As mentioned, the man, Danny Williams works in an airport.  He said that the fact that his Nano caught on fire was bad, but it was worse that it caught on fire while he was working. He said, “If TSA had come by and seen me smoking, they could have honestly thought I was a terrorist.” Of course Apple has said that they’ll replace the Nano, and they are asking that he ship the Nano that caught fire back to them so that they can look into what caused the problem. Now it leaves me wondering if this was an isolated incident, or if others have experienced something similar?

Shortly after the aforementioned Dell incident last year, Dell announced that 4.1 million laptop batteries were being recalled. If it turns out that the battery caused the fire in the Nano situation, it’ll be interesting to see if Apple will issue a recall for some of the iPod batteries. If there is a recall, it could amount into a rather large expense for Apple like it did for Dell when they spent about $300 million!

Source: InfoWorld

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

With all of the gadgets that you have around the house it may seem impossible to find any that are energy efficient. It’s almost hard to imagine what a house would be like without the constant humming of electronics and the glowing LED’s that light up the rooms at night, but you can give some of that up in favor of energy efficient gadgets!

Below is a list of the top 5 most energy efficient gadgets available (according to us), and all of them are surprisingly priced reasonably.

1. Lenova ThinkCentre A61e – This is supposed to be a quiet and energy-efficient computer that, if you so desire, can come with a solar panel for powering the machine. The desktop also uses up to 90 percent reusable/recyclable materials as well as 90 percent recyclable packaging! With it a user could save, on average, more than $20 a year in energy costs and the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emissions created by two round-trip plane flights from Boston to New York.
   
2. IntelliPanel – This determines the on and off power level of any desktop computer to automatically switch on power to peripheral equipment (monitors, printers, router, speakers, etc…) only when the desktop computer is switched on and in use. Peripherals will have the power cutoff 5 seconds after the desktop computer has been shutdown.
   
3. USB Cell Batteries – One of the reasons most people don’t want to use rechargeable batteries is because of the inconvenient, and often bulky charger that accompanies them. With the USB Cell batteries you don’t have to worry about carrying a charger around because you can use any computer (laptop, desktop, etc…) with a USB port. If you’re like me you probably take your laptop with you on vacations, which provides an excellent way to charge these up!
   
4. Solar Powered Backpacks – A solar powered backpack is a great way to get some juice on the go. These come with adapters for popular cell phones as well as a way to charge USB devices, like an iPod.
   
5. Nintendo Wii – Because of the Wii’s simplistic graphics it doesn’t consume a lot of power relative to other consoles, such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It only uses about 10% of the electricity that the other systems use!
    

This article was written in part for Blog Action Day.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Quick: What costs hundreds of dollars and dies after four hours? If your answer included anything portable and tech-based — you guessed right. In fact, most of our magical and exciting gadgetry has less-than-stellar means of holding a charge, but a recent breakthrough by Sumitomo Electric Industries could change all that. Employing the same process used to create Celmet (a NiMH component), researchers at the R&D company managed to coax aluminum into being a bit more receptive. The resulting Aluminum-Celmet has a whopping 98 percent porosity rate, leaving the Li-ion gate wide-open for a flood of electrical juice. And unlike its nickel-based brother, this piece de porous non-resistance has a steep corrosive threshold that could soon help power a line of high-capacity, small form rechargeable batteries. Production is already underway at Osaka Works, with SEI hoping to speed adoption of these franken-batts into our mass consuming mitts. Technical-jargony PR release after the break.

Continue reading SEI creates new porous Aluminum-Celmet, makes rechargeable batteries last longer

SEI creates new porous Aluminum-Celmet, makes rechargeable batteries last longer originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This artist’s rendering shows how Clarian’s hybrid battery could be put together

Clarian Lab’s new generator is a gas-powered battery. That might sound backward in today’s world of hybrid cars, but it actually turns out to be a pretty clever device.

The Hybrid Battery is small, ultra-simple rotary engine with just two moving parts. Rotary engines — like the famous Wankel — are highly efficient and do away with pumping pistons an instead use a spinning rotary piston.

Clarian’s model runs on gasoline, kerosene, propane, natural gas, ethanol, methanol or hydrogen. In short, pretty much any hydrocarbon-based biofuel you can get your hands on. Since fuels like gas have much higher energy densities than electrical batteries (20-30 times better, according to Clarian), it makes for longer operation and — if you use fuels cells — instant recharging.

The trick that makes Clarian’s engine different is that it uses electricity to spin the piston inside the engine and draw in, compress and then ignite the fuel. The subsequent explosion then occurs as normal and the movement is converted to electricity and siphoned-off. The big difference is in using electricity to control the speed of the piston, and therefore control the timing and efficiency. And because the piston itself spins, there’s no need for a separate drive shaft to power a generator. This keeps things very small.

It’s unlikely you’re ever going to put one of these into your laptop, and you’d poison yourself with carbon monoxide if you ever did it indoors anyway. But this could be an efficient and powerful way to replace generators, and even to power cars. Clarian’s prototype outputs 5kW of power from its 125cc engine, and weighs around 10kg including the fuel. In the future it actually could be small enough to fit inside handheld gadgets.
Clarianlabs Rotary Piston Generator Datasheet [PDF]

The Bird Electron charger powers your MacBook for a whopping two hours using ‘just’ eight c-cells

If you were looking for the most expensive and least ecologically-friendly way to power your MacBook, then you could do a lot worse than pick the MacBook Air External Power from Bird Electron. If your other criterion is to have a device that looks like a 1970s cassette tape recorder, then you really have no choice.

Here are the numbers. The asking price is ¥23,100, or around $290. Then you have to buy enough C-cell batteries (yes, I said C-cells) to fill it. It takes eight of them. Next, you’ll need to buy a MagSafe airline adapter, which is another $50.

Then, when your 11-inch MacBook Air has finally exhausted its five-hour battery life, you plug it into this money-sucking behemoth and enjoy mere two extra hours. At least you can head to the corner store and buy up their entire stock of C-cells to keep the thing going. Or, you know, spend the money on a coffee and recharge at a Starbucks.

It gets worse. The box weighs in at a whopping 1,050 grams, or 2.3 pounds, or just about the exact same weight as the 11-inch Air. And that’s without batteries. Add in eight c-cells and, according to this chart, you’ll add another 520 grams, or 1.1 pounds.

As a backup for disasters, when you can’t recharge even an external li-ion battery, this could be worth it. That’s a rather rare use-case, though. Still, it looks awesome, and that counts for something, I guess.

MacBook Air External Power [Bird Electron via Akihabara News]

See Also:

• External Battery Promises 16 Hours for MacBook Air
• MacBook Air Battery Easy to Replace