Laptops and 12V inverters

Hi Vince
I run my laptop of a somilar unit from Radio Parts and it has worked fine for years
Raywanderin' in retirement. victor 2010

Vince, had the same set up, but after reading about having 240 volt inside cabin, decided to look at alternatives. Tandy/Jaycar have a 12 volt unit, trying to find out Part Number and price. This will be a lot less dangerous than 240 Volt. Just my two cents worth.

I was advised by consensus in this forum that a Pure Sine Wave inverter was the way to go, So I bought a 150 watt one from Jaycar for $285 and it works well.....but maybe your $49 one will work just as well. Normally when things are that cheap then that is just what you are getting.........

Cheers,
Willem

Always going somewhere

G'day,

From my point of view, you are fine with this. Only really cheap-crappy non CE approved inverters should be avoided.

Try and get a 12V to 19V converter for your PC though.. Jaycar sell one I think.

The device is a DC to DC switchmode regulator that bumps up the voltage, but at the same time increasing efficiency.

Hi Vince

Refer post 9526 for fuller discussion.

My recommendation then and now is the DC-DC jaycar or similar charger.

Rob

We just use the inverter (300w) for charging camera, phone & rechargable batteries & a Targus 12 volt cig lighter power supply for laptop. You can't run much of a 150 watt inverter.Regards Bob
Where to next

The $49 unit will be a modified square wave (why would you modify a sine wave - doesn't make sense).

My advise is the cheap inverters will work, but shouldn't be used long term as your powerpack for the laptop will have to work harder to get less power, and therefore take longer to charge the laptop battery, and increase the risk of problems.

If you will use it infrequently then it's hard to justify the cost of the sine wave inverter,. but for regular use then the sine wave type are worth the extra (and are more versatile).

This is interesting!!
Can anybody point me to a site that explains how to repack batteries.
A quick search by Google just came up with those that do it, without revealing any of the "secrets".
Thanks in advance.
JackNo trees were harmed in the making or sending of this message.
However a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Vince

I bought a pure sine wave inverter 300 watt from Bisbane just before christmas.

I dropped out of ebay bidding for it at $215-00 and emailed the seller and asked if he could sell me one prior to departure on holidays.
Reply was that he would sell one for $175-00 plus $20-00 postage to Sydney.

Completed the deal and it arrived the next day.

Just got back from holidays and it performed impecably, charging laptop, dig camera phone and other equipment.

Company was unitec. Dual points on the inverter and I mounted it on the cargo barrier.

Not much more dollars and I think a better product for your equipment

CumboTD42
EFS
TX4400
Safari Snorkel
Rola Racks
Milford Barrier
Engel 39l

Vince
Be a bit carefull the 150 watt unit will not run the newer generation laptops for long without overheating.
I had to go to a 300 watt unit for my Dell as the 150 watt unit I had would get hot anf shut off after a short time.
I am now going to buy a Kerio auto/air adaptor as stated in prior posts as a better and cleaner alternative to stepping up from 12 volt to 240 and then back down to 20 volts less wires and crap to contend with and safer than 240 volt kicking around the vehicle.

Regards
John

Hi Willem
My Dell Inspiron 8200 has a 15 inch screen and a Pentium 4 chip,
These newer generation higher performance lap tops do require more power than the older ones.
My 150 watt inverter does run my computer but it does get very hot after a couple of hours. running to long at max power draw.
This is exacebated by high ambient temperatures, hence the inverter shut down due to temp.

The bigger the inverter the less hard it has to work, thats the theory anyway.
But for $49 dollars if It does not work for Vince then it has not cost him a lot.
No harm done.

By the way Willem where do you live, what town ?.

Regards

John

Only one point to add, but I have read that modified sine wave inverters
are very hard on laptop batterys.

I've used one on two big trips, and the battery was essentially stuffed
( approx 30 % capacity) after the first trip.
Perhaps a coincidence. ??

It's not been a problem for me , as I seldom need true portability,
but if it's true, then you need to balance the possible price of replacing laptop battery with price of more expensive, pure sine wave inverter.

We travelled 8,000 ks using just a 150 watt
for phone, camera , laptop with no problems.
It didn't seem to effect the capacity of phone or camera battery
so may be wrong.

timothyDefender Extreme

The majority of lap top power supplies or any switching power supplies do not function properly on modified sine wave.
DSE have a Kerio adaptor for charging laptops.
I could not recommend this highly enough. I know heaps of people that now use them. DSE Electronics
Kerio Taiwan website

Most computer UPS produce square wave simulated sine for power so don't worry at all about that cheap inverter. Don't forget your laptop converts the AC to DC anyway - it will smooth it out enough.

I have run my Compaq from a 300W inverter for a whole month at a time and have had no troubles providing I do not plug the unit in with a flat laptop battery. Charge the battery at home first and use the inverter to power the laptop rather than charge its battery. When running normally with the hard disk spinning and screen my laptop draws about 180 watts, but when it charges the battery from flat it uses nearly 500 watts which is wayyyy to much for your average inverter.

If you get a bigger inverter than 300 watts throw away its cigarette plug and connect it direct to the car battery with some decent high current wire as it will draw too much from a lighter and (best case) blow your fuse.

Paul