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10569
May 11th, 2004 16:00
Power inverters
I want to use my dell Inspiron 8100 whilst travelling in our Motorhome or RV. I have 2 85 amp leisure batteries and want to use the laptop by connecting to them with an inverter. What rated inverter should I be looking for and should it be a simulated or pure sine wave type ?
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glenhead
138 Posts
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May 12th, 2004 13:00
Well, I'll probably get some argument on this, 'cuz I have before, but here goes.
I use a Coleman 400W inverter I got at Fry's, and it works fine. It's rated at 400W continuous and 800W surge, so it's way more oomph than you need for your laptop. The Fry's website (www.outpost.com) has it listed for $50, I got it for $40 on sale. I haven't hooked it up to my oscilloscope to check the purity of the sine wave or anything, but it runs my ancient Celestron telescope's clock drive all night with no discernable variance from dead-on. You're probably going to get about the same performance out of it that you would from your home outlet from a sine-wave purity perspective. The power supply for my laptop runs at about the same temp with the inverter as it does at home - I've run it all day on the inverter at a ham radio field day event behind a solar/battery system, no problem.
HTH
Glen
i8500
2.2GHz P4m
512Mb RAM
Nvidia GeForce 5650 with mod
Eschew misoneism.
godim
507 Posts
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May 13th, 2004 13:00
Glennheads inverter is a good choice. 400 watt is however a large drain on the battery so use very thick cables
.
As your adaptor is 75 watts and about 30% gets lost in the conversion process from AC (inverter) to DC (laptop) you should have an inverter with a continuous output of at least 120 watts. The advantage of < 200 watt inverters is that they can simply be plugged into any cigaret lighter plug. 400 watts can also do this but 400 watt/24 volts > 16 Amps which requires a direct connection to the battery (as most cigarette lighter plugs have a fuse of 10 or max 15 amps).
glenhead
138 Posts
0
May 17th, 2004 17:00
Well, yes, the 400 watt inverters *can* provide and draw 400 watts, but they'll only provide and draw 90 watts to a laptop power supply if that's all that's plugged in. My Coleman has both a cigarette lighter plug and clips for connecting directly to a battery. I've never run more than about 150 watts with it, between my laptop and the telescope, so I can't comment on battery longevity under heavier load.
Glen
i8500
2.2GHz P4m
512Mb RAM
Nvidia GeForce 5650 with mod
Eschew misoneism.