Laptop UPS? Help Please

[Nielken]

Hi,

 

Please excuse the explanation however im not entirely sure what Im looking for - any help would be appreciated!

 

Ive been tasked with finding a UPS like thing, it's purpose would be to sit on a desk and provide a power source for laptops that have come out of a trolley and have ran out of charge, it should allow multiple users to continue using their laptops in the easiest way possible until they get put back in the trolley.

 

Apologies for the vagueness of this but if anyone has any help as to what it is exactly im looking for it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Kind Regards

 

Neil Kenyon

[FN-GM]

You could just use a standard non rackmount one

[AngryTechnician]

Agreed, a normal non-rackmount UPS would do it. They are however:

 

1. Quite expensive
   
2. Very heavy - and the longer you want it to work for, the heavier it will be
   

You may want to investigate those two details quite carefully when you evaluate the feasibility of what you've been asked to do.

 

I'm also not sure how long the battery would last before it wears out if it were being regularly charged and discharged in this way. Normal use for them is to provide emergency power on an infrequent basis, and I suspect the batteries are specified with that pattern in mind.

[Haptic]

Hi,

 

Please excuse the explanation however im not entirely sure what Im looking for - any help would be appreciated!

 

Ive been tasked with finding a UPS like thing, it's purpose would be to sit on a desk and provide a power source for laptops that have come out of a trolley and have ran out of charge, it should allow multiple users to continue using their laptops in the easiest way possible until they get put back in the trolley.

 

Apologies for the vagueness of this but if anyone has any help as to what it is exactly im looking for it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Kind Regards

 

Neil Kenyon

 

I think that your best option is extended power batteries for the laptops, which model laptops are you using ?

[Dos_Box]

You could always buy higher capacity batteries.

[Nielken]

Thanks all,

 

Looks like extended batteries will be the way to go!

[Haptic]

Thanks all,

 

Looks like extended batteries will be the way to go!

 

Let me know what laptops models you have and I'll be sure to get you some great prices on them for you,

[SSFC]

I saw these at bett. I havent used them so couldnt tell you how good they are but it might be a solution for you.

 

Laptop Replacement Batteries, Replacement Batteries For Laptop Computers – Isis Concepts

[powdarrmonkey]

Ive been tasked with finding a UPS like thing, it's purpose would be to sit on a desk and provide a power source for laptops that have come out of a trolley and have ran out of charge,

 

You mean a 4-gang and some normal laptop adaptors?

[dhicks]

Ive been tasked with finding a UPS like thing, it's purpose would be to sit on a desk and provide a power source for laptops that have come out of a trolley and have ran out of charge, it should allow multiple users to continue using their laptops in the easiest way possible until they get put back in the trolley.

 

As others have pointed out, a UPS might do the job - you could actually put a fairly hefty one in the bottom of a laptop trolly if all you're doing is pushing it around on the level.

 

If a UPS isn't quite suitible, you could buy rechargeable battery cells of the required voltage from eBay, Maplins, etc and build your own battery unit.

 

There are battery "extenders" on sale - flat batteries designed to fit under your laptop (kind of like a tray with the laptop on top). You could bung a couple of those on a trolly for those who run out of battery power. They are a bit pricy, though, I seem to remember. If you're dealing with a trolly full of netbook-style laptops it'd probably be simpler to make sure you have some spare per trolly.

 

Is there any laptop out there that takes two batteries yet? All these "designed for education" machines, but yet the most obvious thing that I can think of is to have a laptop that takes two batteries and have a central charging unit that can charge a couple of dozen batteries in one go. No more messing around plugging charging cables back in to laptops, no more running out of power - simply swap over batteries when out of power.

 

--

David Hicks

[AngryTechnician]

Is there any laptop out there that takes two batteries yet?

Both the Dell Latitude and IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad lines have had a 'media bay' battery option for many years (I know I had one in my ThinkPad T20 back in 2000). This replaces the optical drive with a second battery.

 

I currently use one in my Latitude D630 and wouldn't be without it. With an extended battery and the media bay battery I can get about 6 hours out of it even on normal usage with the brightness all the way up.

[Michael]

Buy a 4 or 6 way power extension and buy some additional power leads for your laptops. Problem solved You don't need a UPS for what you're trying to achieve!

[dhicks]

Both the Dell Latitude and IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad lines have had a 'media bay' battery option for many years

 

Good point - I remember investigating twin-battery laptops the first time someone asked me about a laptop trolley, several years back. Problem is these tend to be top-range laptops, and the batteries cost extra, and you can't switch them halfway through using the PC.

 

What the education market needs is something that takes two batteries (a standard size of some sort would be nice), one on each side of the laptop. It would need some way of indicating when a battery needed changing (I'm thinking a glowing red light) and would be quite capable of carrying on with only one battery working whilest the other was swapped around. Such a laptop would have to know to use all of one battery, then switch to the other one, then back to the first after it had been recharged - no always using one and runing it right down.

 

Although... I suppose that second option might be more technically feasible - have two different types of battery, one very easy to slide in and out, the other not so (or built-in, even). The "built in" battery would be there to provide power whilest you switched the other battery, and could be recharged at the end of the day (or week, whatever).

 

Hmm - maybe we just need laptops that can dump RAM to solid-state storage very quickly (small battery-backed RAM?) to provide for workable suspend/restore feature?

 

--

David Hicks