8890 on an airplane? - Page 2

Has anyone tried bringing a power inverter onto an airplane? Or is that considered contraband (large unknown lump of metal)? If you can, maybe someone can try plugging the inverter into the airplane, then plugging the AC adapter into the inverter, skipping the entire car adapter issue completely. I know that Sagers probably draw at least 100W to 120W when charging, considering that P4 processor uses 95W alone, not including the 10W screen, and the hard drives. I don't know what would be the effect of attempting to underpower an inverter, except possibly melting the circuitry connecting the plane's power port...

I'm going on a trip to China this summer, and that's a 14 hour flight. I'd love to try playing a game or something on the way, but I don't know how well that will work without a stable source of power...

I plugged in my 8890 with the sager approved car adapter and had it playing music and such for about 1 1/2 hours - lid closed so the lcd was off - playing CD's. When I was done I went around and tried to start it up the car only to find it had sucked the battery dry.


So, back to the airplane thing, anyone try one of those under the laptop external battery pack things?

Also, since the battery is screwed in place, can you take a screw driver on board with you or are they gonna confiscate that was well?!

-Jon

One other comment.... if you are running it off a battery, is there an external battery carger you could use to charge a spare battery on the plane? I've got an 18+ hour flight to Italy this summer that I'd love to have this thing working for me.

-Jon

Sorry I just noticed this. I'll tell you what cigarette thingy I have..it's this one:

http://www.drivewerks.com/catalog/sh...VECTOR_pg1.htm

I got it at best buy, the only one they had there. And now that I look at this site I paid almost twice that..but I needed it for a long trip so oh well.

However I wouldn't worry about it much at all because I had a very ancient one that I got many years ago which ran the laptop before dying, it also ran hair dryers (badly) I'm not going to claim to be an expert on this but what it looked like it was doing is that a light would go on and it would go BEEP for a long time, as if collecting enough power and then it would be able to run continuously.

I did notice that when the car is off, even the new one that I have beeps when doing things on the computer to draw more power. When the car is running it's constant.

Forgot to reply with the BatterySaver. It also jumps around on mobile meter for me, not really sure what it's doing but I'm pretty sure it saves battery and lowers the temp, I'd have to test a little bit more to find out though.

Heh sorry about the fourm spam. Could you use something like this with the car adapter, it looks like you can plug in the cigarette thing and it turns it into an airplane one?

http://cell-phone-accessories.com/aiadunwowial.html

Well, how much power do cars output? There are so many different cigarette changer things for cars and they all have different wattage (like mine is 400). like I said before it seems like it was drawing a lot of power from the source to keep it steady when it's not necesarily giving out that much. Maybe I'll go look at my car manual to see..

Oh, also a small tip about this car adapter thing. There's a sort of annoying buzzing sound in the audio when it's plugged in. It says in the manual that "some inexpensive stereo systems and "boom boxes" emit a buzzing sound.."

I don't have an inexpensive "boom box" *cries*

Well, I don't know about the circuitry that powers the airline plug (which I believe are the same as the car's cigarette lighter plugs), so it may limit power draw to exactly 70 watts. However, you may be able to "overdrive" it by drawing more than 70, which would just heat up the receptacle.

It may also be possible to run the inverter at lower that required current, and same with the laptop power supply, and just run slightly underpowered. The maximum current allowable would be 5.83 Amps (assuming a 12V supply), and the power supply requires 6, so it may be possible to run it slightly undercurrent. I don't know what any of these effects would be.

BTW, the power adapter is rated for 120 watts, and most cars put out 120 watts. And don't run laptops on your car without starting it up first, sure those lead acid batteries are big, but not THAT big!

What about something like this? http://sturgeon.apcc.com/techref.nsf/partnum/990-1619/$FILE/990-1619_EN.pdf

The bottom of the 8890 says 20A and that's what this thing can deliver. Not sure how that translates from Amps to Watts with VOlts in the there somewhere.

It's getting to be a long thread !!

Before I forget, the back middle row AC plugins are, as far as I know, on the Airbus. I can't say if Boeing has the same setup, but I'm pretty sure that they would have them somewhere on the airplane...

As for taking more power from the DC power at the seats than they are able to provide...I would bet that a couple of circuit breakers would pop before any overheating would occur. You should see the wall of circuit breakers that we have on the back wall of the cockpit! Electrical fire = bad (very bad if in wall)

I don't have any airplane adaptors or car adapters, but since laptop uses DC current, I would avoid any type of converters to AC which would convert back to DC. I think that's the setup used by Sager: the car/airplane adapter goes into the power brick that's connected to the laptop (DC to AC to DC) which might explain the large power draw (that brick gets pretty hot). I think that the "Direct Car adapter" from PCTorque might be it but there isn't much of a description. DC to DC. You'll have to use a car-to-airplane plug.

The brick outputs 20V 6 Amps = 120 Watts (right? W=V*C). I really doubt that the laptop uses all of it, but I'd be interested to see where that 95 W came from...Would it work on 70W ? I think it woud draw its 20V but get only 3.5 Amps instead of 6 so, I think it would run but not have enough to recharge the battery at the same time and even draw from the battery. It would run longer than just on the battery...I think

The APC has a great solution to our problems, but Sager uses a stupid power plus on the laptop that APC doesn's support: no compatible power tip to connect to the laptop.

More on In-Seat Power : www.elecdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/7652/7652.html
APC:naturat's link & http://www.apcc.com/tools/travelpower/index.cfm

Marty

piece of advice concerning the person that asked about the screwdriver. I tried and they didn't like it. so I took the little Philips head bit that goes in the end of it and ditched the handle. they didn't even question the bit in there with all my pocket change

I was thinking about how I would swap batteries on a plane after I ordered my 8790, but before it arrived. Then I thought - thumbscrews. I haven't tried it yet, but the width of the screws that hold the battery in place are about the same as the thumbscrews on my Lian Li desktop case. Might also need bigger rubber feet on the bottom of the laptop to allow for the thumbscrew head. I'll try it after I eat dinner and let you know.