Philip & Marilyn wrote: > Does any one run their laptop directly from the house mains? The > output from my power brick says 17 volts, but the internal battery > supplies 14.4 which most likely drops to less than 13.8 when under > load - so nominal ~13v dc aught to run it. Question is where to make > the connection. Just plug into the power inlet in the back like the > brick does? > > Any problems with this hook--up? > > Thanks > Philip For all the reasons the others mentioned, you probably don't want to do that. A small inverter is one way, however I have heard but can't verify that the typical computer power supply does not like modified square wave inverters. It is said that the circuitry in the power supply that senses 120/220 is confused by a square wave and switches to 220 mode for a brief instant which will cause premature failure. I can't verify the accuracy of those statements.
If you believe that two solutions come to mind. 1) Buy a true sine wave inverter. This is a fairly expensive proposition. Also an unnecessary waste of energy. Why convert 12v DC to 120V AC and then to 18 V DC? None of these conversions are 100% efficient. The better choice is a DC/DC converter. These folks look like they make them for about any laptop on the market. http://www.powerstream.com/ I have a Targus for my Dell laptop and it works fine. There are lots of other universal laptop auto/12V adapters on the market. Let you fingers (and Google) do the walking. Jim. _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
