inverters

what brand inverter are you using

Purchased my 150W from Jaycar electronics CAT. NO. MI5102.

Also got a Projecta 600W when I need a bit more power. The fan is a bit annoying in the 600W one on a quiet night. The 150W unit does not have a fan.

Cheers Bushranger i will look into it

Good on ya val I will suss it out

Good advice from John and Val. When my inverter died while travelling, on the advice from two members here, i got a 12 v power supply instead. Much quicker and easier to set up, and more power effective than running through an inverter.

If you do decide on an inverter, try your laptop on it first. I had an 800 w square wave inverter in our caravan and added a 500 w sine wave inverter for the laptop. My Toshiba Satellite would not run on either inverter, but i could charge the battery from the 500 w inverter with the laptop turned off. My daughter's Toshiba Satellite of a similar vintage ran with no problems from either inverter; just as well as it had a dodgy battery so needed to run from power all the time.

Motherhen

Cheers for the advice David

Ken,

Not quite correct. A laptop power supply will typically be rated 110-250V, 1.5A input, and 19V, 3.5A output. The first though are peak figures - 250x1.5=375W peak input during the starting surge, while 19x3.5=66W output, being the maximum that the thing can deliver. In fact a typical laptop draws around 2A (a bit more for big fast ones) from a 12V battery, say 30W tops.

As Val and others have said, a 12V power supply is the way to go, unless you have some other use for the inverter. Much cheaper and more efficient. The offers from ABR are hard to go past. ABR has an excellent reputation for quality and support.

Cheers

John

John

I agree that a 12 Volt DC-DC unit is the best option - no issues with AC quality and easier to match to the laptop requirements purely based on the Output rating of the laptop power supply.

But they do need to make sure they match the notebook voltage for reliability of operation - in general these days 15V and 19V seem to be most common with the odd weird voltage now and then, and the odd one also that has a dual voltage power supply. As far as we go we generally will not supply anything other than the laptop manufacturers own 12V car adaptors as the laptops are usually under warranty, and not using the manufacturers own will be the first thing they blame if something bad happens under warranty.

You have obviously done some measurements which is far better than theory and I don't disagree with you - but I did not want to get into a confusing discussion of efficiencies and peak requirements. Using the output voltage of the laptop supply does not take into account the efficiency of the supply, and to put a voltage range with only one current rating is not accurate as on 110V it will draw more current than at 240 Volt (for the same output) - so we have to assume the 1.5A is 240 Volt peak current - lots of assumptions to make hence I said it was "far from accurate".

My guess (again without doing any tests) is that the 150Watt inverter may shut down on initial start up surge and that is going to be hopeless for them - hence I was suggesting working on the maximum rating of the power supply for safety margins. Thinking afterwards I may not have had the 500 Watt inverter I was playing with on a high enough current 12V source and it may have been the 12Volt supply shutting down and not the inverter. If only I had more time to play .......


Ken

A 12-19v DC converter if you buy the 6000ma one will run almost any laptop.

Have run my Netbook, Compaq 14in and an Asus 15in no trouble at all.

They wont run on a 3500ma one.

Projecta make both and can be bought at Battery World shops or Big W.

Just make sure you get the one that says on the back Output 6000ma

The model number is DC 6000