Laptop Travel – www.laptoptravel.com

 

     

      10200 - 73rd Avenue North, Suite 120

      Maple Grove, MN 55369

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Air Auto Adapters

Auto batteries and in-flight power systems are common sources of the DC power used by laptop computers. Although they produce the DC power used by laptops and other DC power devices, they generally produce voltage that is below what is required by many such DC devices. (For example auto laptop batteries usually product 12V, which is below the voltage required by most laptops.) Thus DC adapters are necessary to adapt the voltage coming from the power source to the voltage that is required by the laptop or other DC device.

 

 

Laptop Travel carries a complete line of laptop power adapters, both auto and auto/air adapters, for Apple, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM, Sony, Toshiba and many other laptop brands. Click here to select your laptop model from the drop down menu for a list of available power supplies and power adapters for your laptop. For more information about DC adapters, continue below.

 

Auto Adapters

 

An auto DC adapter has a cigarette lighter input plug on one end that is plugged into the cigarette lighter receptacle and on the other a special output connector that is plugged into the laptop's power receptacle. Although recent P4 laptops have higher and higher power requirements, auto laptop batteries have the capacity to supply the necessary output for the PC.

 

Air Adapters

 

An air DC adapter is actually an auto adapter that is supplied with an extra power input plug. All in-flight power systems use either a cigarette lighter type receptacle for laptop use or a much smaller, unique "hypertronics" receptacle. Thus the typical air adapter is an auto adapter with both a cigarette lighter plug and a hypertronics plug. Such adapters either have two separate plugs to choose from or feature the hypertronics plug inside the cigarette lighter plug in a piggyback configuration.

 

Primarily for safety reasons, in-flight power systems are limited to 75W. At the time these systems were introduced, a 75W power supply was adequate to power the laptops that were then being manufactured. However, with the advent of the P4 systems laptop power requirements have increased dramatically and often exceed the 75W capacity of the in-flight systems. As a rule of thumb a laptop requiring more than 75W cannot be used in conjunction with the in-flight systems unless a special "work around" solution is devised.

 

In a few cases, air adapters for specific high-powered laptops have been specially designed to provide a "work around" and allow use of the laptop in-flight. In the absence of a specially designed adapter, however, you may be able to power your laptop from the airline in-flight power system even though the 75W limit is exceeded by taking steps to reduce the actual power needed by the laptop to under the limit.*

 

To do this, make sure the laptop battery is fully charged prior to connecting. If the battery is charged and the laptop will still not power from the in-flight power system, remove the laptop battery from the laptop to further reduce the power draw. If this works, the laptop can be used with the in-flight system. If it does not work, the 75W threshold is exceeded and the in-flight power shuts off.

 

We cannot predict whether these steps will be successful. As a result we offer an "auto-only" DC adapter that will work in vehicles but does not include the hypertronics plug required in most aircraft. If you want to try out the steps suggested above to use the auto adapter with in-flight systems, you must purchase the auto-only adapter and also a separate hypertronics plug. Should you decide to try this approach, unfortunately it is at your own risk and we cannot accept returns of the adapter and hypertronics plug.

 

Airlines With In-Flight Power Systems

 

Click here for a listing of airlines that have implemented in-flight power systems, a description of where they have been implemented and information about other in-flight e-mail data services.

 

*Reducing the power needed by the laptop is possible because laptops require less than the maximum wattage of their adapters. This is true because laptops generally use power (1) to run the PC and (2) to charge the laptop battery. Thus the laptop determines how much power if needs to draw based on how it is being used and on the state of the laptop battery charge.