DC Car Adapter for Laptops - Montana Owners Club

Koerb · 03-01-2007, 07:27 AM

Interested in what type of car adapters you use for your Laptops while on the road. We just got a HP laptop and plan on using it for navagation (W/ DeLorme) as well as keeping touch with Email. Tried to go through the HP site but kept coming up with negative results.

Thanks,
John K.

rickety · 03-01-2007, 07:59 AM

bought mine at Radio Shck, just a little inverter that plugs into the power port on th dash. Works great.

bncinwv · 03-01-2007, 08:59 AM

Got ours at Wal-Mart. Check the wattage requirements on the optional HP cigarette adaptor that goes to your laptop (should be able to find it on HP's web-site or listed in your accessory book, one with equivalent wattage is all you will need. PC brand adapter that we supposedly needed was about $120.00, I think the one we bought was made by Kodak and only cost about $20-$30.00 at Wally World.

illapah · 03-01-2007, 09:01 AM

did you check online at the HP website? I know that my HP ZD8000 uses too much power to run from the cigarette lighter (130 watts I believe). There are adapters for vehicles in you have the applicable laptop.

richfaa · 03-01-2007, 09:18 AM

We have a 400 watt power invertor..way more than is needed to run a Lap Top. Think we got it at best buy and it cost under 75.00 (it was on sale for I think 59.95)

beancounter · 03-01-2007, 09:31 AM

Inverter here too. It's versatile. I don't have to buy a 12V adapter for everything I plan to use in the vehicle.

JH Sechelt · 03-01-2007, 11:54 AM

We have a 95 watt one. Cost about $ 50.00.
Works OK, but it sometimes in the heat of the summer can get too hot and will automaticly shut down.
you have to keep the sun off of it.
I have 2 or 3 others in the trailer. 200, 400, 1200 etc.
Wouldn't go out with out one.

J&D

ARJ · 03-01-2007, 12:36 PM

Inverter here too! Can run and/or charge PC, cell phone, camera battery, etc.

adelmoll · 03-01-2007, 12:53 PM

400 watt inverter. It is small and sits on the floor and works great.

Helen

jrgwdenner · 03-01-2007, 01:58 PM

400 watt inverter here, too. Sometimes they're cheap at Flying J's and other similar places. We use our router hooked into the cigarette lighter. Aircard goes into the router for us. Internet on the road.

Wannabe Full-timer · 03-02-2007, 07:21 AM

I have been wanting one of these but never looked into it. There may come a time I need to use my printer also. Would this inverter have enough power to run a printer and a laptop?
http://www.autobarn.net/vec043.html

adelmoll · 03-02-2007, 08:42 AM

I'm sure it would Sandi and John. It doesn't take a lot of watts for the computer.

Helen

H. John Kohl · 03-02-2007, 09:29 AM

I also use an inverter so it is available for other things. I did run a heavy #6 wire from the battery for the invert and my ham radio equipment. If you use the inverter make sure you put a fuse at the battery.
Good luck and safe towing.
Cheers,

Connorsmom · 03-02-2007, 10:57 AM

I use a 400 watt inverter also. I picked it up at Sams Club for under $30.00. It has at least three plugs also as I recall. I used it in the truck while on my vacation. The fan worked great, it never got hot, never even got warm. It can also charge cell phones etc. Nice little gadget.

Jan

dsprik · 03-02-2007, 01:35 PM

Well, I will really go against the flow here... NOT! I use an inverter and the house charger/adapter. As a heads up, you can get an adapter for $20, but that will not CHARGE the battery of the computer. You will need the very expensive adapter/charger to actually recharge the battery - usually straight from the mfr of your laptop. You can see them smiling now...

sreigle · 03-03-2007, 01:45 PM

I used a 75-watt inverter for the first three years and it worked fine with the laptop. Then I bought a 150-watt unit on sale and it also works fine. I plug them into the power point but the cig lighter would work fine, too. As said above, it doesn't take much wattage to power the laptop.

I see no reason to buy a special 12v adapter for the laptop and then have to buy another for the next laptop.

bncinwv · 03-03-2007, 02:26 PM

Quote: "As a heads up, you can get an adapter for $20, but that will not CHARGE the battery of the computer. You will need the very expensive adapter/charger to actually recharge the battery - usually straight from the mfr of your laptop. You can see them smiling now..."

Not sure I understand how this was meant to sound and I don't mean to sound condescending, but rest assured, on our laptop, we plug the OEM adapter that came with the computer (the same plug that goes into the wall socket at home or in RV) into the cheap $20.00 cigarette adapter, and have no problems at all. The kids have watched DVD's, played games, etc. for 10 hours at a time, while the battery indicator stays at full charge.

dsprik · 03-03-2007, 02:56 PM

Sorry, Hopefulowner, did not mean to sound pointed or anything like that. I just wanted to let everyone to know that I tried to find a replacement when my charger cord started to work intermittantly. I started looking around at electronic stores and couldn't figure out why they were asking $20 for what I thought was a ripoff from HP for my "$75" cord. Then a an electronics store salesman explained that there is a big difference between an "adapter" which runs, but does not "charge" the computer's battery and the combination adapter/charger the mfr sells.

I assumed that anything that ran the computer would automatically charge the battery at the same time. I was mistaken. Maybe I was the only one that didn't know that...

David and Jo-Anna · 03-03-2007, 03:36 PM

I hear Steve saying that he can run a 150 watt inverter thru the power point in his truck. I'm unclear whether people are running their 400 watt inverters thru their power ports or whether they are running new wiring from the battery for those bigger inverters. Can someone clarify how they hookup their 400 watt inverters?

bncinwv · 03-03-2007, 03:40 PM

I think I understand what you are saying now, and you probably are correct. The difference in our applications is that we were not replacing the OEM charger/adapter but rather were still using the charger/adapter that came with the computer. However, we are plugging it into a cheap adapter that in turn plugs into the cigarette lighter. I don't know if that affects the laptop battery or not. Maybe we got side-tracked, but the original question was what type of car adapters we used for our laptops. All I was trying to say was that the $20.00 cheapie we got at Wal-Mart has ran our laptop for extended periods of time. Therefore, in my opinion, depending on what Koerb was originally looking or, the cheapie adapter works well for what we are using it for.

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