External battery charger...

Has anyone tried the external Lenovo Thinkpad Multiple Battery Charger II? I have an X41 with a spare battery and was thinking about getting one of these to recharge my spare battery. It would be a lot more handy to always have a charged spare battery at hand. The price is the deciding factor (I see one on the web for slightly less than $100 and several in the $130 range.

I'm about to pull the plug and get one of these, but would like a littlle input as to how good they work. I assume they recharge a battery in about the same time as battery in a laptop with the A/C plug connected.

 

It pays to watch the sales on Lenovo. A couple of weeks ago I saw the Multiple Battery Charger II on sale for $99 and grabbed it. Today it's back to $139.

If you don't have an extra battery, there is NO need for one of these. I do have an extra battery from my previous Thinkpad that fits my new one. Since I quite frequently carry my laptop to different rooms and run off the battery, it seems like I almost always run my battery down to shutoff time. If my other battery is not recharged, it puts me out of business unless I want to go the A/C mode.

With the Multiple Battery Charger, I will now always have a charged up battery ready to go. The charger actually will charge 2 batteries at the same time. The A/C input uses the same cord/brick that came with the laptop. If anyone is interested, you can find this unit elsewhere via Google for about the same price as the Lenovo sale price that I got.

In the picture below, the green light on the left means the unit is powered. The orange/yellow light on the left means the battery is charging. When fully charged, the light goes green also.