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November 09, 2015

Acer TravelMate 5744Z Battery

More laptop makers are making it difficult or impossible for users to replace the battery themselves, the Dutch consumersâ€™ association Consumentenbond said on Friday. Five years ago, customers were able to change batteries in 77% of laptops but this has now shrunk to 42%, the association says in a new report. In total, researchers checked out 600 different laptops to find out how easy it is to swap batteries. Apple came bottom of the bunch, scoring just three out of 10. Top was Lenovo with a score of 9.6, followed by Toshiba on 8.6. The association says a new battery costs between €40 and €80 but replacement by the manufacturer or a repair company costs up to €200.

Today the Chinese computer maker announced the new Yoga 900, the latest in its line of "bendy" convertible laptops that can be used as a traditional laptop, a tablet or a propped up display in tent mode.

Its gold body might be what catches your eye initially (or make you think of the gold MacBook); but as the saying goes, it's what's on the inside that counts. The Yoga 900 runs on the new sixth-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 Skylake processor, a new chip from Intel that's supposed to offer greater performance and reduced power consumption. It comes with up to 16 gigabytes of memory, can be configured with a 512GB SSD and has JBL stereo speakers with Dolby Audio.

SLIGHTLY THICKER THAN LAST YEAR'S YOGA PRO 3, BUT WITH BETTER BATTERY LIFE

The Yoga 900 has a quad-HD, 13-inch display, a roomier keyboard and a larger trackpad than previous Yogas. At 2.8 pounds and 14.9mm thick, the Yoga 900 is just a tad heavier and bulkier than last year's Yoga 3 Pro, but that's to accommodate a bigger battery: Lenovo is estimating up to eight hours of battery life with this model, compared with the 7.4 hours of battery life with the Yoga 3 Pro. And Lenovo is still claiming it's the world's thinnest Core I convertible laptop.

And, of course, it's running on Windows 10, taking advantage of the Continuum feature that lets users switch between keyboard and tablet mode more easily.

Lenovo has certainly gotten favorable reviews over the past few years for its Yoga line, blending high-performance with sleek design and an innovative hinge that lets users bend the laptop in all sorts of ways. Still, its biggest line of business is still its ThinkPad line of laptops. And while the Yoga sells well in the U.S. and Europe, it's less popular in China, a market where other Lenovo products dwarf competitors.

Nexus 5X Review: Design & Display
Back when the original Nexus 5 launched, the idea of an all-plastic smartphone wasn't unusual - in fact, in the Android arena, it was practically the norm. What a difference a couple of years makes. Metal-clad Google phones are now more common, with the likes of Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony all incorporating the premium material into their phone designs. Consumers seem to view metal-cased phones as a more premium proposition, and even last year's Motorola-made Nexus 6 mixed metal and plastic to pleasing effect.

And largely speaking this yearâ€™s phone market has been pretty dull, save for a few strong releases from Samsung and Motorola. Everything else -- including the iPhone 6s -- never really set our pulses racing. The HTC One M9 was a damp squib. Ditto ALL of Sonyâ€™s releases. And 2015 is an incremental year for iPhone updates. All in pretty dull stuff compared to the innovation we saw in 2013/14. Nevertheless, you can usually rely on Google to shake things up a little. And this yearâ€™s handsets were no exception.

The new Yoga 900 convertible laptop starts shipping today for $1,199.99 for the base model, and comes in three colors: silver, orange, and gold. That's not your $500 holiday laptop bargain, but then again, the top-of-the-line Lenovo Yogas never are.

With some lengthy upcoming trips for personal work, I have been doing some research into ways to keep my photographs and video footage backed up in the field. One of these trips involves a three-week stint in remote villages. A particular concern on this trip is data loss; so, I have been working to create a backup system that is durable and can run without access to mains power. Today, I will share my solution with you.
The Problem
For three weeks, I will be out of touch with the modern world. This means no mains power for charging electronics, no internet or phone reception, and a difficult time backing up data. Having lost data to corrupt memory cards a few times before, this is one of my basic requirements now. I considered my usual backup system when I am close to home. Could I take my laptop? Charging a laptop out in the wilderness would be possible using a solar panel, battery, or inverter system. However, this would be bulky and we are planning to be constantly on the move. My backup system would need to be smaller and less energy-hungry than a laptop-based system. Preferably, it would fit in a small waterproof case, as we would be traveling by river most of the time. So, I began looking for products that would allow me to back up without a laptop present.

The Search
The new WD My Passport Wireless was my first port of call when starting my research, as it seemed like the perfect unit with its built-in SD card reader (I will only be shooting to SD cards). However, it failed my durability criterion. As a spinning hard drive, I was worried about damaging it if something took a fall during the trip. Knowing that I probably won't shoot more than about 500 GB of data during my three-week trip, I started looking at SSDs. To date, nothing like the My Passport Wireless exists with solid state storage. So, I would need to find a way to power and transfer to an SSD without a computer.

Initially, I started looking at transferring images from memory cards to my LG G Pad 8" and then transferring back to an SSD connected to the tablet. However, this seemed like a convoluted solution to a simple problem. I continued my search and eventually stumbled on the RAVPower FileHub RP-WD03. It had everything I was looking for: an internal power source, SD card reader, and USB output. It seemed like this would be the missing link in my backup system. So, I ordered one and waited patiently for it to arrive.

portrait man travel photography backup
The Test
All my specs were met with this unit. The internal 6,000 mAh battery can output 5 volts at 1 amp (USB 2.0 spec); so, it is able to power an SSD. The unit can act as a NAS and is accessible from a wireless device like a smartphone. This means that transfers can be done without a bulky, mains-dependent laptop. However, I knew that I would have to stress-test this unit to make sure it would hold up in the field. Could it power an SSD for long periods? Could it reliably transfer the large amounts of data we would be shooting?