Travel chargers?

[Fat Tone]

Does anyone have a favourite travel charger? I'm fed up of taking so many adaptors with me - 2/3 phones, DS, camera, video camera, laptop, plus the mains plug adaptor required which means you can't always charge everything you'd like to at the same time.

Are there any good brands, or any gotchas to look out for?

Ta,

T.

[Brian Ellis]

The biggest gotcha is that most of the devices you mention have Li-ion and each capacity requires a different charge regime or you bugger the battery for good. They are very prone to overheating. E.g., the original charger for my Nikon DSLR battery has a constant charge current until the voltage reaches 7.4 V, when it shuts the current regulator down and starts a voltage regulator which causes a minute current to flow until it reaches 7.5 V when it shuts down all charge and the LED glows permanently instead of flashing. I also have an Energizer Digicharger with adapters for the Nikon, my two Pana camcorders, AA, AAA (NiCd, NiMH or Li-xxx), a Fujifilm digicam etc. It charges, at 8.4 or 4.2 V irrespective of the battery characteristics and it has killed more Li-ion batteries (including a Nikon one, three Fuji ones and four AAAs) than I care to think about, even though it claims not to and has a red charging LED and a green charged LED. You may not notice it at first, but after 3 or 4 charges, you wonder why your digicam no longer works after half-a-dozen shots.

[VJ]

I also have been wondering about those things...

Of course, seeing that my mobile phone uses a standard mini-usb connector, and my mp3 player a standard usb to charge from, I gather things are far less critical.

Along those lines: what about external batteries? Philips as a range called "Power2Go", I believe Belkin and Kensington also have something similar. The upside would be that rather than just a universal charger, it could also provide an extended battery life... But I assume the power issues are similar to those of 3rd party chargers...

Jörg