Desperate Technical Weight Question

[Griffin NoName]

I am entering the Obscure Technical Question Championships.

This is a serious and pressing question.

My laptop is too heavy, all the bits I need to travel successfully with it are too heavy.

However, I have managed with the help of wheels.

But wheels don't obviate the necessity of lifting the case with wheels into and out of the car.

I have a vital bit of equipement which plugs in via USB.

This vital bit of equipment will not work with laptop-powered USB hubs (I have a nice one I use for travelling).

It will work with USB hubs with their own power supply.

Hence I now need to increase my burden by swapping my nice lightweight laptop-powered USB hub for a USB hub with its own power supply (which I will need to purchase).

Now the downside is that USB hubs with their own power supply come with those lovely super HEAVY transformers on the power lead.

So my question is:

Which USB hubs with own power supply have the most lightweight transformer?

if anyone can not only give a correct answer but come up with a more inane question then I will concede the championship

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On a slightly seperate journey but anyone who can read my mind will see how I got there, I came across this on amazon and am now having fantasies about adding an extra USB port via my ethernet port......





actually at £0.49 I am tempted to buy a few dozen of these just for the hell of it

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I honestly don't know but you got me thinking on 2.5" portable hard disks. Some, in order to power the disk use 2 USB connectors instead of one and that way you avoid the use of an extra power supply. I may be that you can find a USB hub that does the same trick.

[Griffin NoName]

Nothing like that works because I only have one USB port on the laptop.

I thought I'd solved all my problems when I realised my USB hub has a DC socket for a 5V power input (0.7 jack) (even tho it did not come with a power lead). There's a natty DC jack-USB male cable (obscure, I can only find two online shops in the UK that sell them). The idea is that you use the USB port on the laptop to power the USB hub. But in my case that would mean I couldn't plug the USB hub into the USB port because it would be being used to power itself......

The answer I think is to get a USB PCMCIA card and the DC jack-USB cable. A two port card would do as I could piggy back my existing hub off it. That would solve the weight problem.

I'm just not convinced it will work properly. There's an awful lot of complaints about USB PCMCIA cards scattered all over the internet.

I might go for the Belkin, which apparently works if you don't use the drivers that come on the CD in the box !!!

EDIT

Oh and there is a USB hub that uses a USB Y cable which effectively does the same trick. I think some hard disks use Y cables instead of the two USB cables as you describe.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Oh and there is a USB hub that uses a USB Y cable which effectively does the same trick. I think some hard disks use Y cables instead of the two USB cables as you describe.

Actually that's what I was talking about, a Y cable.

[Griffin NoName]

It is an unfortunate name. Every time I think of a Y cable I get a flash of John Major in his underpants. British politics has a lot to answer for.

[ivor]

What's the vital bit?

[Griffin NoName]

My cell phone - as modem for laptop - reckon it will be cheaper than paying for hotel broadband access. It won't work off a USB hub which is self- powered. It works fine otherwise. Getting good speeds too.

When I had small kids holiday preparations used to involve lots of sewing and darning. Nowadays it's all prepping the laptop.

Anyways I've just ordered a cheapish PCMCIA card with 4 USB ports which powers off the laptop USB port. Arrives tomorrow. Problem solved. I found a good site - they have driver downloads too - and a telephone number so I was able to chat with them which means I can ring them up and shout if it doesn't work. As long as I can shout at someone I will be happy.

Cost = 1 days hotel access. So not a lot to lose.

Penny pinching and weight pinching. Life's little adventures.

[Griffin NoName]

The USB 4-port hub PCMCIA card with DC jack cable to power it from the laptop is superb.

Only drawback is, it doesn't seem to give enough power to the hub for a cell phone !!!!

I managed to get into PC world today and stood there weighing up all the 4 port hubs with AC power cables !!!  I wonder how many customers they get like me. Standing there comparing the weights of items.

There is a tremendous difference in weight for exactly the same items - really surprising.

I've bought a treasure by Belkin. Almost weightless. The power adaptor plug for wall socket is a dinky plastic affair (apart from the prongs of course!) and tiny as well as lightweight. The 4 port is nice compact and almost pretty too. Excellent design by a reliable manufacturer.

My new devious plan is to use the USB hub card to give me 2.0 speeds (my actuall laptop port is 1.1) and piggy back the new USB hub off it powered for the phone. That way I should get the max 12 Mb browsing speeds. I've also bought a cheap data package off my cell phone people for my period away so no silly hotel charges and reduced carrier charge compared to ad hoc use.

I am now fit to travel. Well, I'm not, I'm exhausted. But my laptop is.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I imagine the laptop is one of those ultralight. How old is it?

[Griffin NoName]

No it isn't. That's part of the problem. I wanted a decent screen size so compromised on weight. I had no idea at the time that weight would become such an issue. 

I've got a wheeled laptop case but I still have to lift it at times, like getting it into the car. Travelling has become really difficult as the more ill one is the more one has to take and the more one has to pack it all into more and more seperate packages. There's probably an interesting equation around the effort expended in shifting N packages of average weight X compared to M packages of average weight Y.

The laptop is 2002, well specced except for the single 1.1 USB port and now of course not duo core.

I am holding on as long as I can to replace it. And I am not sure how I will compromise on screen size as the really lightweight ones still have small screens. I suppose I am hoping I can hold on long enough for technology to have that one solved.

[Bluenose]

You might like to consider on of the wide screen units.  I got one for Mrs Blue and it quite a compact unit, but screen size is subjective and seems more determined by the width, so a 16:9 screen looks bigger then the the same (diagonal) size 4:3 screen.

[Griffin NoName]

Thanks Blue, but I have a width problem too. My current laptop is as wide as I can take. I use it on one of those tray cushions in bed and it just about works. Anything wider would be unmanageable.

Everything's compromise - when I am feeling really rough it is too heavy to lift off my "lap" !!

I expect I will have to compromise on screen size eventually. Or get better

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I vote for the second option.