[X4U] iPad news

[Neil Laubenthal]

You could be right . . .although with the short time a device would be hooked up it might not suck down all that much battery capacity. I would think a flash drive would be pretty low draw . . .but something like a laptop drive might pull more. I checked and the startup draw is listed (for the Seagate I looked at) 1 amp max and then a max of 3 watts during seek. So running that drive for 10 minutes would consume maybe 1 watt hour total . . .with a 25 watt hour battery in the iPad that does suck down the battery some but it's not like it would absolutely kill the battery for short usages. 

Just for grins . . .I pulled the MagSafe adapter on my MBP 3:30 remaining. Plugged in my usb drive and it went down to 2:30 (this is a 7200 rpm drive which pulls more power than the 5400 above). Granted the MBP has a 50 Watt hour battery instead of 25 . . .but it doesn't look like short term running of a drive or flash drive would crush the iPad battery.



On Jan 31, 2010, at 8:51 AM, David Ledger wrote:

> One of the problems with a USB port is that the standard says it has to be able to supply 0.5A to a plugged in device. This would play havoc with the 10hr battery life.
> 
> A camera always has battery power at least, and so doesn't require any of that 0.5A. Maybe calling something a camera port means it doesn't have to be full spec USB.
> 


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There are only three kinds of stress; your basic nuclear stress, cooking stress, and A$$hole stress. The key to their relationship is Jello.

neil