Power Inverters

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:18 pm

Alright, I bought a 400w (600 peak) power inverter for my car that runs off the 12v AC adapter in the car. It agrovates me that this POS only does 150w when running off the outlet and 400w when running off the battery. The whole battery thing is out since I need to run this in my car.

What I'm trying to run is my laptop. It's an Inspiron 9100 w/ a Pentium 4 2.8GHz w/ HT. THis thing has a 150w power brick and when the CPU does anything, the inverter goes nuts and shuts off because I'm trying to draw too much power from it.

Are there any good 2 plug inverters out there that anyone knows of that run off of the 12v outlet? It would be nice if it ran 250w+ and not be a million bucks. It would also be nice if I could buy it locally rather than online incase it breaks or dies on me.

wuzy · Post by **wuzy** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:05 am

Buy a car charger that can charge over 2A/h. Connect that up to your inverter. AKA articial car battery.
Trust me. it works!

Kinda pointless tho. main->12V->main->12V(for laptop)
Rather a waste of energy in form of heat as it goes through a series of inverters.

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:35 am

Hmm... sounds like an okay idea, but I don't really want more junk laying around in my car.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 5:30 pm

buy a small UPS (brick type would be ok) that draws 150w but has enough output for the laptop, it should even out the spikes that overload the inverter.

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 7:15 pm

TTT

I don't want extra stuff in my car, just an inverter to run my power hungry laptop. If you know of a decent one or if 200w+ isn't achievable though a 12v car outlet, tell me!

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 4:30 am

here's an inexpensive (less than $1 million ) model from tripp lite (well known name brand)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000A ... e&n=172282
I still think a small UPS would help.
this actually ships from Office Depot so you could probably find a local source, but maybe a higher price.
with a little work you could wire it up in the trunk or under a seat and have nothing but an outlet or extension cord showing.

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 4:04 pm

That looks a lot nicer! I can't find it on Office Depot's website though. I do see it on Amazon, but why wouldn't they sell it on their website too? I'll have to search around and see who sells that inverter or one very similar to it.

The words that I like reading:

Continuously supplies up to 375 watts of 120V AC power to 2 AC outlets from any 12V battery or automotive DC source.

That's music to my ears!

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