Using your laptop away from the wall socket is the way to go in portable computing, but your laptop battery will eventually run out. This becomes critical when you are deep into your work on word processing or watching a very intriguing DVD. In both cases, the battery should be well-charged to ensure that it sees your task or activity through to completion.
Battery ratings are very helpful in order to understand how much time is left between charges. The rating are in amp hours, and the higher it is the longer the time it takes between charges and the more you can do in less time. The usual ratings of most batteries are in the1-3 amp hours and usually take four hours to make a full charge.
There are, of course, batteries that have higher capacities of up to 8 amp hours which can charge your battery in about one to three hours. These are more on the heavy side to compensate for the swiftness in charging, of course.
If you are weighing how much power you require along with the number of hours you work, then you might probably come up with estimates of using as much as 208 kilowatts each year in order to power your laptop. There is so much spent and you end up wasting a lot of electricity for this.
Good thing there are solar chargers that will help you power up your laptop and still make savings out of it. Solar chargers for laptops are almost free because they use energy from the sun – which is the best free source of energy.
This is especially useful when you work outside, because even if you run out of charge you can get power from the solar charger in just a very short time. The price for these chargers varies, of course, depending on the amount of power you want it to charge up.
The first type is the voltaic generator, which is a 15 watt unit that is made from recycled materials. It is quite heavy since it weighs four and a half pounds and takes a whole day to charge. It is usually priced at $600. Second, you have the Xantrex Technologies 852-2071 Power pack which has a 400 watt inverter and two AC outlets as well.
You can charge several items at the same time thanks to its USB port, but it is heavy at twelve pounds. It is also quite cheap at just $200 but it is a sacrifice in portability. And finally, you have the portable charger which is 30 watts and comes with its own flexible solar panel.
This means it can charge while you work at the same time. It is a bit expensive at $700 but the advantages are the charge-while-you-work feature and the ultraportable weight of only four pounds. Indeed, it is a good thing to have a solar charger with you especially when you know you are working on something important on your laptop and you cannot afford to lose a charge.