During November 2022, I faced blackouts in my residential area of Kyiv, so here I share my experience of overcoming obstacles
I will highlight the following aspects: Laptop, Internet, Light, Ergonomics.
Laptop
The first step: check the presence of an energy-saving mode on your model. For MacBook Pro this is the “Low Power Mode” option, for OS MS Windows: “Best Battery Life”.
If this is not done, the battery life may vary several times depending on the class of programs that are running.
Taking into account the above, we get a rule: do not trust the manufacturer’s official specifications for autonomous battery operation, but in the presence of light, test the laptop with typical tasks and determine more or less realistic indicators of autonomous operation for the most resource-intensive class of tasks: in my case, this is exactly the period of video conferences in MS Teams and screen sharing calls in Slack.
The solution can be either a second laptop or an external battery — a powerbank. Battery Requirements: Have Power Delivery features, large battery capacity. I chose the Baseus Power Bank 20000 mAh, PD 65 W QC 4.0 model which is actually able to add about 80% more charge to the MacBook Pro 13 2020 model. The enabled “Low Power Mode” option and the presence of a power bank gave me a guarantee of 18+ hours of battery life in a typical everyday work scenario.
Light
First: it is needed. I had to see many colleagues in offices who are used to working with insufficient lighting, even with the possibility of turning on the light at the workplace. The peculiarity here is that fatigue does not appear immediately, but imperceptibly and gradually. Productivity begins to fall within an hour, fatigue quickly accumulates and drowsiness appears. Unpleasant sensations such as tiredness in the eyes may generally appear only the next day.
Ok then… how much light do you need?
There is a variety of all kinds of gadgets on the market — compact LED USB lights, including those with a built-in battery. And here is my own experience — I do not recommend considering lamps with a nominal power of less than 5W, 5–10W is fine, but I managed to get comfortable feelings and a good “picture” with a virtual background only with two LED lamps with a total power of 10W + 5W!
Before you start looking for desk lamps with a built-in battery, I recommend checking the characteristics of the LED lamps you already have.
Yes, in my case it was:
- Maxus DL 10W 3CCE, which requires a constant power supply with a power supply unit that outputs 5V 2.4A
- FunDesk LU1 with a power supply unit that outputs 12V 1.5A
And here the important thing is that most of the existing power banks give the same output 5V or with a current of 1A (older models) or 2A, 3A (new models)
All you need in this case is the DC 5521 — USB-A cable and your lamp becomes autonomous, and you can already adjust the time of autonomous operation yourself — using a power bank of the required capacity: returning to the Maxus DL: using a power bank with an ammeter function, I found that it consumes 5V and 1A in the maximum mode, thus a 5200mAh power bank with a power of 18.24W will supply up to 3 hours, but the Eurolamp LED-TLG-1 model with with a nominal power of 5W, which actually consumes 5V 0.5A for up to 7 hours!
Internet
The first unpleasant discovery: if the entire neighbourhood is disconnected from the electricity for more than an hour, the quality of mobile communication, including mobile Internet, quickly deteriorates: both the speed and the signal strength drop, and within an hour and a half, the mobile Internet stops working completely, only messages to messengers are delayed . Moreover, this applies to all three large mobile operators: Vodafone, Kyivstar, Lifecell.
The second unpleasant discovery — most of the existing Internet providers use FTTB (Fiber To The Building) technology due to the optimal price-quality ratio among alternatives, which has a disadvantage: the need to power the equipment, which, as a rule, is located in the apartment building where the subscriber is located.
Only 3 technologies can provide uninterrupted Internet in the absence of light in the neighbourhood:
- satellite Internet (StarLink)
- PON / GPON (passive optical network)
- xDSL (signal over telephone lines)
PON technology until 2022 was used mainly in the private sector — with high connection costs. Unfortunately, it is difficult for providers to quickly reorient themselves, as well as to cope with a huge number of new orders for connections using FTTH technology.
And here is the first pleasant surprise — after submitting two applications at the same time — one to the GPON provider and the second to the xDSL service provider — the VDSL provider was the first to respond and make the connection on the 28th day after submitting the order.
It turned out that the “Ukrtelecom” provider over the past 6 years, while modernising the network in my city, now has an average subscriber Internet speed of approximately 30 Mbps (while the maximum for this technology is up to 50 Mbps).
The question of how exactly the provider powers distribution cabinets remains open, but the fact is that during two weeks there was never a case of a lack of cable signal during power outages!
The subscriber has to take care of powering the modem on his side: here the scheme is similar to that of the LED lamp with the feature that almost all devices require 12V 1A-1.5A.
Therefore, a POWER DC — USB-A cable with the function of increasing the voltage (“power boost”) from 5V to 12V
and the capacity of the power bank from 10000 mAh for one device — to ensure autonomous operation up to 8–10 hours.
Ergonomics
“Last but not the least”: Unlike an external monitor — the height of the screen in a laptop is limited — the author strongly recommends using special stands for a laptop with a mouse and keyboard as in the photo below. Your posture, neck — they will thank you!
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