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Recharging your iPad on an ordinary PC

For all their vaunted care about "user experience" Apple panicked me in my first moments with my then new iPad on release day April 6.  When I hooked it up to my PC to do its initial sync (why is that even necessary?), I looked up at the battery gauge and saw the words "not charging".

Was my iPad broken?  Why wasn't it charging from the USB cable?

I plugged it into the power outlet and it charged, whew?

The mystery was solved when I went online and started reading others first impression of their new iPad.  Apparently standard PC's do not put out enough power to charge the iPad.  Macs do though.

Then reading the net on my iPad the other night, I found a reference to Asus passing out a new USB driver, the AI ReCharger,  that allows some PC's to charge the iPad.  I downloaded it and ran it, and it works.  At least in the few minutes i tried it.

My iPad spends precious little time in my home office.  It travels during the day, and spends home time on my bedside table.

It is handy in the office when the computer is doing a render or some other cycle consuming task.

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