laptop in car

[MACnonsence6]

k so my laptops power supply is ur standered brick with out a ground just a 2 prong plug. im wondering how would i hardwire this into the car with out using an inverter. a laptop uses a 12v powers upply so could i just cut the cord after the prick and hardwire it with to the battery?

[kickass audio]

actually you cannot just splice the wires and put it directly into the 12v of your cars electrical system. Laptops charge at 14-18.8v so the 12v would not even get the laptop any power to run any components. Some computer charge at even more than 18.6v of power. You need something to boost the voltage up higher or use a 16v system where it will charge around 18v. Steve did this to make his mac mini work in his tahoe:

Either way you need a step up voltage for it so it takes your voltage and raises it up enough to run the computer off it.

[Stephen]

plus you need steady voltage, which your not going to get in a lot of cars

[kickass audio]

the steady voltage part is somewhat along the lines of why steve used the power adapter for his mac mini. It regulates the power and keeps it pretty steady for his computer. He hasnt had any problems with it so im not really thinking it hurts his mac mini running off car power with the adapter. Running it just straight off the battery is completely impossible to do and as stephen stated is not going to be steady at all, it fluctuates a lot.

[MACnonsence6]

do u think it would be a less expensive route to run a power inverter instead? i have an old laptop thats duel 1.8s 2g ddr2 with no hdd i was gona get a tb for it and a screen of one of those acer small laptops and mold it into my car take the board out of my toshiba and find somewhere to put it in the car.

also does anyone know of a wireless keyboard that also has a mouse built in as well as a volume knob on the keyboard its self. ive been on newegg and cant seem to find one that has all 3 of those things and the ones i find with the volume knob arnt wireless

[kickass audio]

for your wireless keyboard with a mouse built into it, look here: http://www.gadgetytech.com/2009/01/14/a-wireless-keyboard-for-my-media-server/ its made by logitech but costs about $200 so dont expect anything cheap. They have ones that are hard wired for cheaper.

For your power inverter it would be a little cheaper but i wouldnt get one you just plug into your cigarette plug and call it a day. I would at least get a 150w power inverter (just to have some overhead, usually a 95-100w is good enough but can get hot on a near dead battery or a laptop with a high display brightness) and hard wire it to your battery. The power wires going to your cigarette lighter were not made for anything more than 15 amps of current if your lucky, most are only 10 amps. I would get something like 12-10 gauge and wire it to the power inverter directly with a fuse into the line for protection and then plug your laptop into it.

Now if you were just going to occasionally use the laptop in the vehicle the cigarette lighter will get you buy but id monitor the power wires to make sure they dont overheat and melt.

[MACnonsence6]

i have a power inverter with + - wires on it so it has an adapter for a cig lighter or u could run direct from the battery im not sure on the wattage so ill go look in a min but before when i was using it it blew the fuse in my cig lighter not sure if its cause the inverter is to small for the laptop

[kickass audio]

The reason you blew the cig lighters fuse is that your inverter had a surge of power greater than the fuse. DO NOT i repeat do NOT upgrade the fuse to a higher amperage fuse, doing so will cause wire overload and can burn the wire. I would just do like i said and get some 12-10 gauge wire (speaker wire would work, i did that for my 3sixty.2) and put something like a 30-40 amp fuse depending on how long the run is and wire it directly to the inverter.

To check the wattage of your laptops power adapter, look on the back of it. There will be a sticker with the serial number, manufacture date, etc. There will be one that says output power (it will read a number and then have a w after it. Usually they are 65w, 90w, 120w) see if you can find out the wattage of your laptops charger and then find the wattage of your power inverter for me as well.

[MACnonsence6]

the power inverter is 200 watts and says up to 1.7 amps on the brick for my laptop it doesnt list wattage just input and output intput is 100-240v -50-60hz 1.5a

output 19v 3.96a

[kickass audio]

It may be a 90w adapter brick for your laptops charger. That will definitely work with your power inverter without making it sweat. I would really think that a 200w power inverter could be too much for your cigarette lighter. What size fuse do you have in you cigarette lighter fusebox?