inverter to charge laptop

We haven't used it on the laptop yet, but we bought a 500 w pure sine wave one (from ebay), and kept the square wave 800 w as it is fine for recharging power tools etc. They are mounted in the caravan, so having both was easy.

I use a Modified Sine Wave 300w inverter from Jaycar for all my power requirements, including recharging the laptop.

Recharging a laptop is the same as recharging camera batteries, the power pack converts the voltage to between 12 - 20v (I think my 2 IBM stinkpads are about 16V), depending on the laptop. I am lead to believe by people in the power industry, that a modified sine wave will not hurt the powerpacks or the batteries.

There was some discussion on the Overlander forum about 8 months ago that lead me to buy a modified over the pure sine wave. A search would find this thread.

Andrew

Thanks,

Looking on Jaycars site their modified sine wave inverters said it able to run a laptop, and ive been happy with their products in the past so i'll probably go this way.

Regards
Rev

talking to the engineers at work they said definitely pure sine wave. they said while the lappie may charge from the square wave they said in cases it stuffs up or confuses the control circuit and stuffs the battery up. there were other reasons they told me and cannot remember them all. for the price of the lappie and other gear that needed charging like my expensive video camera (professional) battery square wave could have been expensive exercise. ended up with a 150w powertech sine wave inverter for $200 delivered

Why not just use a 12v laptop power adaptor (cigarette) from Jaycar or similar?

iif you have the doe buy a 2000 what one off ebay as I did it is modified wave but works laptop a treat and you have use for all the other luxuries you might need along the way.

I have a briefcase computer.

This is a normal computer stuffed into a an aluminium tool case with a LCD screen
in the lid. ( I don't like lap tops, to hard to repair at home)

I have been using it now for 5 years.
Only times it has failed were shortly after using it on a modified square wave inverter. (Top quality from Jaycar, 300w electrically isolated )

Have replaced 3 power supplies in it so far.

Will buy a pure sine wave inverter before I use it again off a battery.
Not worth the risk and hassle to replace another computer power supply.