wind usb chargerPeople spend a lot of time figuring out how to make their gadgets last longer. And in the realm of netbooks, that’s usually meant shopping around for third party extended capacity netbook batteries or building your own. But one hacker is taking a different approach, and using a standard netbook battery as a charger for iPhones and other USB powered devices.

After all, while a standard 3 cell MSI Wind netbook battery may only provide a few hours of run time for a laptop, it’s got enough juice to run a low power device like an iPhone for ages. So he cut open the battery and connected a USB port that can be used to plug in a USB charging cable.

The hack is not for beginners. It requires some soldering and a bit of electrical know-how. And to be perfectly honest, the end result is a kind of ugly mobile device charger/extended battery. But it certainly gets cool points. As you can see in the video after the break, the modified battery can still be used to power a MSI Wind netbook as well as USB gadgets

via Make and GottaBeMobile


Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

4 replies on “Forget adding power to your netbook, use a netbook battery to power everythng”

  1. Or he could just use one of the many netbooks that has a powered USB port, even when the netbook is off. Too easy, I guess.

    1. But then you have to carry the netbook. This seems like a lightweight solution to keep an Ipod or camera charged if you aren’t going to be near any outlets for a while. You could probably go on a week long backpacking trip and listen to your music the entire time without adding too much weight.

Comments are closed.