mobile power supply question.

[mecharmor25]

I was wondering if anyone has used or seen a desktop backup battery or a mobile power supply.

I am currently working in a position that requires a lot of traveling, and the company does not provide laptops and batteries. Having a laptop is not the primary concern for me fortunatley. Rather I am concerned about the power usage of the laptop.

I am looking towards batteries the size of your crt monitor. Now it may sound ridiculous but I am only putting it in the car and working in the car. I expect those batteries should easily last half a day? approx 8 hours on full load with laptop.

I am not sure if the UPS backups will do the job, which is why I ask.

[hushypushy]

im not 100% sure about this, but cant you get a car adapter for your laptop? if not, they have power inverters so you can use your car battery to get DC power. if you are afraid of killing your battery you can always put 2 batteries in your car. a friend of mine has a 3000+ watt system in his car with 5 screens and he uses 2 batteries.

[Alchy]

Car adapter will be anywhere from $10-50 from your laptop manufacturer. An inverter will set you back $30+ from a hardware store, but will use up your car battery much more. On the plus side it's damn cool to have a mains electricity available in your car, for other shit. I've got a friend whose van runs on a hybrid gas/petrol engine, and he can keep it on overnight (on the gas) while powering a music rig. It rules.

[Neo_ZX]

Here's what I would do. If your CPU can throttle, set it to lowest. Set all components to max battery life.

Don't know if your laptop can accomodate this buy if it can, buy 4+ high capacity laptop batteries. Stick 2 in at once and if you notice they are draining, quickly pop one out and stick another in. Wait for the other to drain and stick in another.

Have a car kit to charge if all else fails.

I think that's a lot more portable than having a giant block of a battery and more convenient than having 2 car batteries.

[hushypushy]

yeah, getting a 2nd car battery isnt just "pop in the other one", it requires a lot of complex stuff.

hmm, maybe look up the police; they have laptops in their cars. see what they use.

[mecharmor25]

replacing car batteries seems expensive. Wouldn't it be better to use one of those mobile batteries instead? I assume they should last about eight hours, recharge them overnight. And collecting energy from the local utility seems cheaper....

Does anyone know the average power usage of a P4 laptop?? (not that I am buying the best but Its just for statistics.) Or do they use the same amount of power as your desktop? My desktop uses 365 watts.

Constantly installing and uninstalling car batteries seem alot of work. I assume you have to do more than just plugging the power and putting on the screws? Are they fully rechargable??

I don't know much about car batteries though so I wouldn't know how long they would last before they require recharging.

Is driving the vehicle an effective way of recharging the battery?? I remember in science class, the teacher told me that there exists a device that converts the mechanical energy to electric and then sending that energy it to the battery. Would driving a kilometer or two fully charge that battery if it is near empty?? maybe even idle the car for half an hour or so?

[n_w95482]

That device you're talking about is called the alternator. As for how long it takes to recharge a car battery with it, I'm not sure. Letting the car run for a half hour to an hour should charge it but it's not good to let a car idle for that amount of time. A combination of idling (0-10 mins, maybe 15) and driving (normal day driving) should work well.