Powering Laptop from Car..

Futureshop has great return/exchange policies... but the notebooks sold there are only mainstream and so you don't have much flexibility.
Smaller, local computer stores are good... they can pretty much do whatever you want. Most often, you can find nice, cheap Centrino notebooks from these stores.. and in my opinion, that'd be your best bet.

Now, as for running the notebook from your car... I'm not entirely sure if that's possible. If you can find a notebook that has a car AC/DC adapter ... then you're good to go. Otherise, I wouldn't really see any other way.

You also have the option of buying spare batteries...

Any old power inverter will run a laptop, in my experience, as long as it's not a low-wattage inverter and one of those P4 PowerSuckerPro machines with a power brick that weighs as much as a brick.

I run mine in my car all the time.

PCTorque sells direct car adaptors for most of their Sager notebooks. See here. I bought a DC-AC converter from them for my 8887 when new, but I've rarely used it.

toshiba's are a lot better all around than dell's. I have had nothing but bad luck with dells especially the hd's they use.

I bought a basic power adapter for the car for a recent vacation trip, played movies on the laptop the whole time, no problems. 30 bucks at your local S-Mart.

Shop smart, shop S-Mart.

This will work just fine...

Hi KIKO, I have an H.P. Pavilion ze5580us Laptop which is rated for 90 watts of power consumption. (not exactly a trivial amount). I frequently use it in the car for searching for private wireless networks on the road, Viewing DVD movies rented at Blockbuster, Listening to my CD. collection (from my Hard Drive using Windows Media Player 10), and for other more normal general purpose computing tasks.

Do this: Go to your local RADIO SHACK store and buy their "140 Watt Plug-In Power Inverter" (Radio Shack part number 22-148). This gadget plugs into the Cigarette Lighter of your car and converts the car's 12 volts electrical power to standard 120 volts, 60 Hertz household electrical power. It has a single 3 prong electrical outlet and can power any product that draws up to 140 watts continously.

I use mine with an Extension Cord (not recommended) and power my laptop through it's AC Power adapter and an H.P. PSC-2170 Multifunction Printer/Scanner/Copier with excellent results so far. It's been working flawlessly for the past 8 months.

PS. : The Inverter includes a small built-in fan for cooling. Also, i dont recommend using the Inverter for more than 3-4 hours with with the car's engine NOT RUNNING. as you could drain tha car's battery. You wont encounter any additional problems with this setup.....

ENJOY!!!.....

I use an APC 350W inverter purchased for $60 at compussr. You only get 150W (+/-) from a cigarette lighter, but I also go camping/off-roading so it could come in handy some day.

Here's a link to a thread on this same subject, lots of useful tech info (and warnings):
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=353909

Worth noting here is that if you have a gaming laptop, you're probably not going to be able to get enough juice from a standard cigarette lighter. Most have to direct connect to the vehicle's battery (even if the laptop battery is fully charged, still blows the cigarette lighter fuse ).

[btw -- I'm "Pinky" on OCF... old username, I use this one now when I register on forums ]

Stoopid: I have a "gaming laptop": eMachines M6811, Athlon 64 3400+, Radeon 9600, 15.4" screen. It runs just fine off of a cigarette lighter -- the power supply is only rated for 90 W, so even with the power brick's max spec (which has a safety margin of its own -- the lappy doesn't pull that much. acpi -V says ~60W) it's nowhere near, even considering power conversion inefficiencies.

If you're really worried, you can underclock the processor to save power using ClockGen or similar. Most games aren't CPU limited.

The only thing you'd have to worry about is if you have a Pentium 4 laptop. If you have one of those, the best thing to do is to donate it to a shelter for the homeless as a space heater and get a new laptop.

caveman: Most inverters have an auto-shutoff that will turn the inverter off if the battery voltage drops to a certain level to prevent you from draining your car battery far enough that the car won't start. Mine is something like: alarm at 10.6 V, shutoff at 10 V.

Stoopid: I have a "gaming laptop": eMachines M6811, Athlon 64 3400+, Radeon 9600, 15.4" screen. It runs just fine off of a cigarette lighter -- the power supply is only rated for 90 W, so even with the power brick's max spec (which has a safety margin of its own -- the lappy doesn't pull that much. acpi -V says ~60W) it's nowhere near, even considering power conversion inefficiencies.

If you're really worried, you can underclock the processor to save power using ClockGen or similar. Most games aren't CPU limited.

The only thing you'd have to worry about is if you have a Pentium 4 laptop. If you have one of those, the best thing to do is to donate it to a shelter for the homeless as a space heater and get a new laptop.

caveman: Most inverters have an auto-shutoff that will turn the inverter off if the battery voltage drops to a certain level to prevent you from draining your car battery far enough that the car won't start. Mine is something like: alarm at 10.6 V, shutoff at 10 V.

Canada right? You can get an inverter at Canadian Tire that should suit your needs. They have a whole range of various wattage. But I would still stick to a centrino laptop or a mobile athlon to keep power consumption down.

Yes, there are some that will run fine (yours is under the 150W threshold) -- but many gaming/desktop replacement notebooks run those P4s you fondly referred to. THOSE are the ones people seem to be having issues with (maybe because the cpu along needs 90W?? lol).

There's also the matter with some vehicles only allowing 10 amps (stock) on the cigarette lighter.