A lifeline for your dying battery

This will sound like a pretty good idea to anyone who has ever gone crazy digging around for an elusive A/C adapter while their battery life ticked away.

Antec, known for its PC cases and power supplies, showed off its recently introduced NP100 universal laptop power adapter at Digital Life. Compatible with most Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba laptops, the NP100 includes a series of interchangeable connectors and a switch to control output voltage for different laptop models.

Of course, it would be great if laptop manufacturers would agree to a standard power cable (like desktop PCs), but we suppose they'll have to get in line behind the digital camera and MP3 player camps. For now, we'll take what we can get.

(Photo: Antec)