laptop charging while away

I use the same and it works well except that the plugs it comes with do not fit my Toshiba tablet very well . I am going to get a plug from Toshiba and put it on the wire .

Cheers ,

Willie

My inverter is hard wired and lives under the driver's seat. A power board tucked under the seat gives multiple 240V power outlets.

Norm the J Car one has a variable voltage output for various items / laptops and comes with all sorts of plugs .

With the inverter , you still have to carry all the transformers / chargers for each item .

I think it is six of one and half a dozen of the other .

I have the Jaycar supply for my tablet and an inverter for charging batteries for the camera , drill , phone etc .

Willie .

Fair point Mike. But we carry the power supplies for all our stuff anyway to run / charge off the gennie if we have it going. So short term camping and travel we use the inverter. Longer term camping and running the gennie a couple of hours a day, we use the gennie.

Not suggesting my system is best for everyone or even better than anyone elses. But it is my system and it it works well for us. I will eventually improve it when I copy you and upgrade to a caravan. We'll then use solar as much as possible and reduce the use of the gennie.

We head off tomorrow for NT, so I'll give a few more of those lures a work out.

Norm C

May I suggest you go for a 300W interver? Only a little more expensive but quite a bit more useful for powering those things you don't yet know about :)

Mike Harding

Thanks Mike,

will look into it,


do you have to hardwire a 300w in or can you use a hella style plug.....only need to use it occasionally.

Cheers Mick T

Not sure what a Hella plug is - cig socket?

If you were using the full 300W the inverter would require 25A and you would need to seriously look at the wiring but it looks as if you'll be using around 120W so decent alligator clips would do for that - a cig socket may struggle? If, further down the track, you need the extra power you can look again at the wiring but at least you won't have to buy another inverter.

Mike Harding

Hi Mike,

I think some people call them a merit socket..think they'll be ok for about 20A..not sure....have one in the dash with large power feed off remote post for aux battery...so will shut power when drains battery too low. have Rotronics RDC12 system with 2 aux AGM 90 A/H batteries

Hi Dunaruna,

How do I tell which one to use....mine is a dell laptop about 2yrs old

Cheers

Mick T

Interesting. We have run two Dells on modified sine wave for a couple of years without probems.

I was surprised and disappointed. My 2000w modified runs everything without a problem, until the dell charger was plugged in - ziltch, nada.

I walked into jaycar ringwood with the dell under one arm and a battery under the other. We tried a few before we struck gold with a little 150w pure. The people at jaycar said that I was not the first to have charging problems with a dell/modified inverter.

Dell were no help at all.

We live and learn.