Powerbook - weak USB power

I bought a very small 80GB Iomega portable USB harddrive recently. It said on the package that it's connected by a USB cable to a computer, and gets the power from there. In case of insufficient power supply, there's a second USB cable that can be connected. I, of course, thought that my Powerbook (as the name already says) has enough power to make this HD run with just one cable, so my plan to load my ipod (unfortunately only USB) from the Iomega HD should work. Unfortunately I was wrong: I have to use 2 cables connected to my 2 USB ports all the time when I use the drive, cause the external HD does not get enough power from just one USB connection.
So I bought a USB-PCcard to make sure I can also connect my ipod to the PB when the Iomega is connected. I was a little bit annoyed by the necessity of an additional bulky USB-card, but it works. I thought it's probably a problem of all laptops.
Now I recently tried to connect the Iomega drive to different computers and realized, they all work using just one cable. This includes desktops, PC-laptops and my girlfriends ibook!! So the PB is the only computer that does not deliver enough energy through one cable and therefore needs a second one!! Now I'm very annoyed!
I'm not sure if they should still call it the "Power"book
Anyone had a similar experience or a suggestion other that "return the Iomega HD" ??
Thanks
Tom

wordmunger said:

Did you try it with the PowerBook plugged in?

Click to expand...

Actually when I tried the drive for the first time I was in the train, so I thought the problem is that the PB is not plugged in. That made sense to me. But plugging it in at home later didn't help....