going mobile

anyone here ever power a laptop off a cigarette lighter?

my dell has lousy battery life (90 mins, tops; usually more like 45), and i cud desperately use a recharge between jobs. plus, i even want to power it up and use it sometimes sitting there in the car (stake-out style). alas, 9 times out of 10, i don't have the charge left to do this.

i figured dell wud have a cord for 30 bucks or so, with a knock-off being signigicantly cheaper (maybe 12?). so imagine my surprise when i walked into bestbuy and found out the knockoff was like $118! well, it's a dual-head (one for car, one for regular outlet) cord, but still. the single-head (outlet) one was itself around $105!

ok, so forget the car for the moment. what happens when my regular ole power cord falls apart? (looking a bit frayed atm) i bought my laptop with cord for 180 bucks.

there isn't a chance in u-kno-where that i'm paying $105 for a cord alone!

i'm sure there's cheaper places online (maybe dell itself), but my head is still reeling from seeing prices in the $100-120 range, when i was expecting $10-25.

 

I've done it before- but I use an inverter- its turns your cigarette lighter into a standard wall outlet. You can get low wattage ones for $20, or slightly beefier ones for $40 ish.

 

"inverter"? how exactly does that differ from a "cigarette lighter adapter" (which seems to run about 80 bucks higher)?

 

I believe you're talking about a adapter specific to your laptop. Something like this or this is what I typically use. I haven't used either of those products specifically- I just wanted to show you what they look like.

 

An inverter will take the DC voltage from the lighter/power socket and converts it to 110v AC. The inverter has an outlet on it like a wall outlet and you then plug your laptop power brick into the inverter like it was an outlet at home.

The adapters replaces your power adapter brick by plugging directly into your laptop's socket where the power adapter usually goes (and a lot of laptops don't use the same plug which is why they cost more-made for an individual series of laptop).

Sam

 

I bought one of these from Kmart (who is owned by Sears - that's why it says DieHard) for $19.99 on sale. At Sears it was $24.99 for the same model. I see they've raised the price again
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_02871522000P
I put that into the lighter socket and plug the laptop in. It also has a USB port so you can charge something else.