NoteLight

NoteLight is a small light on an 18" flexible cable that plugs into the ADB port of any Mac and, therefore, does not need a battery. I ordered it for my PowerBook 3400 to be able to see the keyboard when the lights are out, like on an airplane or during a conference. The NoteLight is made by MCE and I saw it mentioned on Jason O'Grady's PowerPage last week. Mike Weinstein got one and reviewed it on his The Daily Mac site on Monday, commenting that the major con was increased battery consumption. I got mine Tuesday from MCE and used it a lot to get the feel of battery use. Surprisingly, it seemed to me that NoteLight did not affect battery use very much, so I devised a simple test. I set my PowerBook to run continuously off the battery, neither shutting down the hard drive nor dimming the screen for one hour from a full (100%) charge with and without NoteLight plugged in and turned on. Without the NoteLight, 77% of the charge remained and a projected 2hr 19min were left after running for an hour. With the NoteLight on, the comparable results were 75% and 2hr 10min--NoteLight had a minimal effect on battery consumption. In addition, my opinion is that NoteLight puts out a lot more light than is necessary to see the keyboard opening the possibility of reducing battery consumption further with a lower watt bulb if such exists.