USB Charging Output Power

My Blackberry, Bluetooth headset, and MP3 player all manage to charge when connected to the USB ports on both my personal desktop and from my work laptop. However, when plugged into the Aspire One D150-1165 they don't charge.

I'm guessing that with these notebooks the power supplies to the USB ports do not have enough juice? Or do I have a bum supply? Do other folks have this problem?

Is there any software solutions? I don't see anything in Power Management but maybe there's something in the BIOS or elsewhere where a higher power output can be flipped on.

 

The machine has a pretty limited power supply. I have encountered the same problem.

May sound like a crazy idea, but how about dimming the display?

 

It's been a while since I've had a 150 model, but when I had mine, it did charge my mobile phone (back then an HTC Touch Diamond).

My D250 still manages to charge my new phone (now an HTC Touch HD), as well as provided I use GPRS when tethered, my other I-Mate Ultimate mobile phone. BUT if I bandswitch the I-Mate over to 3G, there's not enough juice to charge the phone and maintain an internet connection.

 

The battery charging circuit in the AAO's will only allow so many amps (watts) to be drawn from the AC power supply. You could try leaving your battery disconnected when running it on AC power (As Acer recommends if you RTFM) and see if that gives you enough extra amperage to allow charging. Also on the plus side your battery will last years longer and you'll save a few watts of completely wasted energy used trying to charge fully charged batteries all the time.

I found out something interesting about these units, if you take the battery pack off you can run them directly from a 12V car system. It won't work though if the battery pack is in, you need several volts of 'headroom' for charging and the sensors in the battery charge circuit won't work with a voltage below about 16V. (The sensors are part of the battery itself, that's what all the extra connections are for) After the charging circuit all the regulators (4 downconverting switch mode regulators) are rated for 5.5V-25V input. After figuring the voltage drops for a protection diode and MOSFET switch you could probably get away with a voltage as low of 6.5-7V **IF** the battery pack is removed first. I only went down to 11V in my preliminary tests because I'll never see a voltage less than that from a 12V battery. Running it without the battery pack saves several watts of power too which is always important in a situation like mine where I'm running it from a deep cycle battery. Wasted Watts ALWAYS generates excess heat (And vise versa) , another important consideration

Edit - Something else I should also note.... When running the AAO's on battery the regulators all see the nominal 11.1V, then run on AC they see whatever the adapter voltage is which is 18V in this case. Since you can also run it just fine without a battery (Some laptops won't work this way) that was my clue it was capable of operating over a wide voltage range if the battery wasn't used. Schematics and tests confirmed my suspicions. Solar power enthusiasts should also take note because you could run these right off your 12V storage batteries and they only use less than 10 Watts when running without the battery packs attached.

 

Not only did mine not charge my BlackBerry battery, it drained it completely. Means I have to carry charges when I travel, which is a bummer.