--- "LeFevre, Paul" <lefevre@midway.com> wrote:
> You can buy a DC adapter for any laptop made that'll run quite nicely
> off of a 12V source
> (i.e. car batteries). These also charge the batteries. The one I
> currently have is a "universal"
> type, that has different tips for different devices and will work with
> any laptop (it also runs off
> the DC outputs on airplanes, where it sees most of its use).
Please note that direct DC adapters will not work with some laptops, Dell
in particular, AFAIK. I believe that the Dell AC adapters have some
intelligence or power conditioning built into them. I bought one of the
universal laptop DC power supplies and could not get it to work with my
Dell Latitude LS. I ended up having to buy a dedicated DC power supply
that cost >$100. I don't believe it was efficient because it put out
quite a bit of heat. Nowadays I use the laptop's AC power supply through
a small power inverter. It sounds inefficient (DC to AC then back to DC
again) but in practice it actually works quite well.
Cheers,
Paul Sterngold
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Received on Mon Apr 26 06:04:27 2004