Newcastle Systems Mobile Workstation Overview

Not sure which Newcastle Cart series will be right for you?  No worries, we've got you covered.

To start, use the chart below to determine what level of equipment you will be hosting on the cart.

Equipment Level @ 8+ Hrs.		Description
	Extra Light	A Laptop, a small thermal label printer and a Scanner or Micro PC (or Mac Mini) and an LCD monitor (27" or less)
	Light	A Laptop, a full size thermal label printer and a Scanner or A Micro PC (or Mac Mini), an LCD monitor (27" or less) and a scanner
	Medium	A desktop PC (or a laptop or a micro PC), an LCD Monitor, a full-size thermal printer, and a scanner
	Heavy	A desktop PC (or a laptop, or a micro PC), an LCD Monitor, a laser printer, and a scanner or A desktop PC (or a laptop, or a micro PC), two LCD Monitors, a full size thermal printer, and a scanner.
	Heaviest	A tower PC, an LCD Monitor, a laser printer, a full size thermal printer, and a scanner or A laptop (or micro PC), two LCD monitors, a laser printer, a full size thermal printer, and a scanner

Once you've determined your equipment level, you'll want to choose a battery type and configuration.

Currently, there are two types of batteries offered.

The first one is a standard lead acid (abbreviated SLA) battery. This operates like (and in most cases looks like!) the battery used to start your car.

It's main benefit is that it is significantly less expensive. So you can get more power (operate more equipment for a longer shift) for the same budget.

The two disadvantages are that it has a more limited number of recharge cycles (generally around 300) before the battery degrades and holds less and less of a charge. The second limitation is that it should not be fully drained before being recharged. Some manufacturers even set this level as high as 50%.

The second type offered is a lithium iron phosphate (abbreviated LiFePO4) battery. This is like the Lithium Ion batteries in your phone or computer, except for one important factor. By including iron phosphate in the formulation, it is dramatically less likely to succumb to thermal runaway (catching on fire) when damaged or ruptured.

The main advantages over an SLA battery are that it has a much higher expected number of recharge cycles (typically around 2000) and it can be used down to 0% without damage.

The main disadvantage of the LiFePO4 batteries is that they cost significantly more... up front. Over the lifetime of the battery, however, they are often less expensive to operate.

Next, there are two main battery configurations offered. They are "fixed" and "swappable."

	Fixed	A fixed battery is anchored to the cart and therefore, the cart must be moved to a recharging location at the end of a shift and the work shift tailored to the capacity of the battery. For example, an 8 hour shift followed by a 10 your charge cycle.
	Swappable	A swappable battery can be removed and replaced with a freshly charged battery without having to move the cart back to a echarging area. A work shift can be arbitrarily long (even 24 hours or more), as long as there are enough charged batteries in reserve to swap out. A dual swappable configuration can even continue operation while one of the batteries is swapped out for a fresh one, as long as the equipment connected to it does not exceed the capacity of the remaining battery.

Once you have decided on the battery type and configuration that will be best suited to your work and budget, it's time to pick a chassis (Series & Model). Here's an overview:

You will find, in each workstation product page, and also in the configurators linked above, a more complete listing of what equipment level is supported, what the battery configuration is, and what type of battery is included.

Note that you will see some abbreviations where the output and capacity of a battery are stated. Here's an explanation for each: