- For use at home or office, in the car, and on planes and boats
- Includes S1, S3, S4, S5, S10, S11, and S12 notebook tips
- Provides up to 90 watts of continuous power
- Compatible with a wide range of notebook/laptop computers
- DualPower accessory for powering an additional portable electronic device
The charger is ENORMOUS. At least twice as heavy as the OEM IBM charger, and weighs more than the IBM, Sony, and Dell chargers added together. The cords are thick and extremely long. This is not the charger to bring on a trip.
The plug is a three prong plug which usually creates significant problems in a lot of foreign countries if you want to use plug adapters. You can buy cords to fit some plugs in foreign countries from IGO, but they are fairly expensive. Further, the cord to the IGO charger is, of course, proprietary lose it and you are hosed.
It didn't work with the Sony phone at all. With the IBM Thinkpad, it charges the laptop when its in hibernation or off, but it doesn't work right if the Thinkpad is on it switches off and I have to unplug it and plug it in again. It works fine for the Dell.
I'm not exactly sure who this is targeted for its nice that I can plug in two devics at once, but at home I don't mind having everything plugged in with its own charger. This is WAY too big to carry on travel. I can't even imagine whipping this sucker out in the airplane to charge my laptop.
I've switched back to the OEM cable and two charge-and-sync USB cables for my phone and PDA that I found on the internet.Summary:
With the i-go juice 70/90, you can power a notebook from car and hotel. Pay another $20 and get the adapter and it will charge your cell or ipod also.
Pros: One bag will carry it all. Contrart to what others say. Tips are available for almost every product from radio shack, etc. at $10 each. they have tons of them. The "monster cable" tips at Best Buy are interchangable.
Cons: You have to work to get it all in one bag. Not just one item as it looks. There is a power pack, a car cord, a house cord, power pack to notebook cord, and the optional cell/ipod charger cord.
Summary & my breakages:
Good product. The first I bought from Ebay and the wall cord worked every once in a while. The second had a problem that I couldn't figure out. The third was really my fault. I always left the cord from the power pack to the unit plugged in and just wound the cord around the power pack for storage. The pins on the end wore down and broke off within cord. I know that three breakage in 6 months is really bad; but, I do think that it is a good product worth buying.
The only real competition in the kensington that just came out. It appears flatter; but, still about the same size. Alot of people don't like it because the wall power cord is just 5". I look at that as a benifit because the power cord is bulky. The cord to the notebook is 10' long; but, it is a thinner cord so it is easier to store. I travel weekly, so the engineering here is very good in my eyes. To many, it seems stupid. I think they are not thinking clearly nor traveling weekly with the unit like I am.
I looked heavily into the Targus and Monster Cable units; but, they are re-packaged i-go's. They are the same and the tips are interchangable just look at them and you will see.
I looked into the APC unit also. It looks awesome on the surface because the cable just wraps around the unit and it has built in USB charges on the side. The problem is that there is a dial on the side and YOU choose the voltage. Good luck getting it right. There is also a very big discrepancy on whether the tip will fit your computer. I searched the internet for 30 minutes and NEVER found a compatablity list. Try it yourself. It's not even on the APC website. I looked long and hard because I really liked the unit; but, in the end it appears flawed. I do not want to choose my own voltage. I want somone to guarantee that this or that is correct in writing!
I have had 3 i-go's in the past 6 months.It did everything it says it would for me and it's a decent design, but this product is a POS quality-wise. As many others have reported, the build quality is very poor. I promise you it will break just about the time that the warranty runs out. At least they upped it to two years, so you may have a chance to get it fixed before it breaks.
I extended its life by using a rubber band to hold the cable in place better so that all the contacts would touch, but finally the cable end that connects to the brick just broke. You can now buy replacement cables now from the igo site, but $20 to replace a shotty part that costs a few bucks isn't very good.
The fact that these replacement cables are backordered tells me that many people have this problem.
Buyer Beware.The sleek industrial design of the power unit belies the heavy-duty industrial "design" of the wires that connect to it: they are thick, heavy, and inflexible.
While other laptop adapters can manage with a thin AC cable and two-prong plug, the iGo uses a heavy cable with giant plugs at each end that would be better suited for powering a refrigerator than a laptop. The same is true of the power output cable: an unecessary heavy braided shield visible through the thick and low-flexibility PVC insualtion makes that cable hard to use. I've often had the adapter tip pop out of its socket on the laptop because the cable doesn't bend properly.
The power part works great, but I wish they'd offer replacement cables.
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