Koss Totem Mani-2 - Manual (Page 51)

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I
t struck us when we were packing
up to go to Vegas for CES and
T.H.E.Show: each year we need
more and more chargers to go
anywhere.
Not all of our chargers are related
to audio, to be sure, though some of
them are. Two of us went along to
cover the shows (see Vegas 2006 in UHF
No. 75), and we actually brought along
no fewer than seven chargers! Count
’em: an iPod, a Palm Life Drive (which
is a video players among other things),
a Palm Tungsten T, an Apple iBook, a
Pentax Optio digital camera, and two
telephones (Siemens and Motorola).
We wondered what all those boxes and
wires would look like on an airport X-ray
screen!
Which is why the iGo Everywhere
Dual Power 130, shown above, grabbed
our attention. It promised to replace all
of our chargers except the one for the
camera (the Optio battery unfortunately,
can’t be recharged in the camera). It
comes in two parts. The larger box can
charge laptop computers. The smaller
add-on box, which is an option but is
included in the package we got, can
charge the iPod, phones and other small
products. Your main problem will be
rounding up the adapters for everything
you own, but with the company’s help we
got ’em all, even the one for a Motorola
P280 phone, which took a little longer.
There’s one down side: the iGo can
recharge all six devices, but not all at
once. On the plus side, you can travel
worldwide with it, because it adjusts itself
to whatever voltage is in the wall.
Each device of course requires its own
adapter tips, and in our case that meant
six adapters. The vinyl iGo carrying
pouch has a pocket for adapters, but good
luck figuring out that “A20” is what you
need for a Motorola phone. We picked
up one of those dollar store giant pill
boxes, with seven compartments for the
days of the week, and relabelled them.
Do you need one?
Not everyone travels with as many
devices as we do. Six chargers is a lot,
whereas three or four may be a bearable
number.
And six devices may not mean six
chargers. If one of the devices you carry
is a laptop computer (you’re unlikely
to buy the iGo otherwise), it’s possible
that other devices can be recharged by
simply plugging them into the laptop’s
USB connector. That’s true of the iPod,
and it’s also true of the Palm Tungsten
handheld (though not of the Life Drive).
Indeed, the Palm and iPod travel char-
gers are substantially identical: plug-in
cubes with USB jacks.
And the iGo Everywhere may not
make your luggage lighter. We weighed
all six chargers we wanted to replace and
came up with a total of 762 grams. The
weight of the iGo with its cords, except
the optional car cord? It was 738 g, and
that didn’t include the six adapter tips.
But weight isn’t everything. If we had
measured the kilometers of tangled cord
on each of our adapters, it would have
put the iGo way ahead. What’s more,
rounding up our six chargers means get-
ting down on hands and knees to unplug
them, and the danger of forgetting a
charger for a critical device is very real.
What it costs
As we went to press we didn’t have
official list prices, so we relied on iGo’s
on-line store (www.igo.com), and in
Canada, the catalog for The Source.
The unit we have seems to sell for
US$150/C$190, with adapter tips going
for US$10/C$12. Considering the going
price for just a charger for a modern
laptop, that’s not bad. And street prices
may be well below that.
An alternative?
At the same time we saw the iGo, we
also looked at an interesting universal
charger from a company called MFuel.
It’s called the Universal Power Bank,
and there was a picture of it in our Vegas
report in UHF No. 75.
The MFuel device can also charge
everything you’ve got, but it can do
more. It has its own rechargeable battery,
and it can power those devices, to give
you extra usage far from a power source.
We asked for a review sample and got no
reply. Since Vegas, its price rose from
US$300 to $400.
Our guess, however, is that it weighs
a lot more than 738 grams!
Power On the Go
And how many power
chargers do you
travel with?
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 4