Valence N-Charge Ladesystem

Geschrieben von Andreas Erle (01.07.2004 00:00 CET)

The main argument for a PDA is the fact that all relevant data can be carried when you´re on the road. And normally you also carry your mobile phone, and when you need more computing power, a notebook joins the party. But look at the stuff you have to carry with you: A bag full of technical stuff, full of different power supplies. Not really comfortable... And in the worst case, the battery of the device you need most ist empty exactly when you need it most. To copa with that, three different replacement batteries (if available) have to be carried in the already full bag, too. It doenst take long until the bag is replaced by a suitcase...

Valence Technology, Inc. have developed a small revolution with their N-Charge System.
N-charge is an ultra-flat battery sized roughly DIN-A4, containing a Lithuim Ion battery basing on their revolutionary Saphion-technology.

N-Charge has a high-power port and a low power port. That first port is mainly used for charging N-Charge by the repective notebook power adapter. A good idea, that makes N-Charge independant from the notebook type and local currents/plug norms. Simply plug in the norebook adapter (currently available for HP, Compaq, Dell, IBM and Sony notebooks, others may follow soon), plug in the power supply of your notebook on one side, the notebook itself on the other. Both the notebook´s internal battery and N-Charge are charged.

On the lower end of N-Charge you can see the low power port, for which adapters for various mobile phones and PDAs are available, inkluding Ericsson, Nokia, iPAQ, etc. The charging process of notebook and PDA/mobile runs parallelly.

So far for the theory. What is the practical value of N-Charge then? People only using a PDA and a mobile phone will surely prefer other solutions, even though you could charge small devices forever and a day. All those people travelling arounbd with a notebook alone or combined with PDA and mobile just HAVE to buy N-Charge. It´s invaluable! The Sony Vaio PCG-Z600TEK shown in the pictures , that nomally only manages to run 65 minutes on battery managed to be active for more than 10 hours. And take into account that N-Charge acts like a reguar power supply for the notebook, which means the mobile Pentium processor continues to run with highest speed (instead of going down to 500MHz on battery mode). Besides charging the notebook, N-Charge charged two iPAQs and two Nokia mobiles parallelly. If you now take into account that a replacement battery for notebooks is ridiculously expensive (for the Vaio EUR 415,- for roughly 5 hours battery time) there is no question which product is more valuable. For this reason clearly: