Power adaptor?

Hi.

My laptop came with a U.S. AC adaptor, which is fine for now but I'm moving to the UK in a month and I was wondering if I should buy a new adaptor.

My sister is in school there and uses her VAIO with those plug in power adaptors, and it seems to work OK except her battery life sucks when she uses it vs using the regular U.S. outlets back home.

Should I just use those wall power adaptors or should I buy a new UK AC adaptor from Dell ($115)?

 

you should be fine with just a wall adapter, most if not all modern laptop powerbricks supports 110/220w conversion.

on second thought, maybe your laptop already has that adapter that you need. it's usually the detachable plug that goes from the outlet to the powerbrick. (I know my old HP had like 3 different ones that came with it so I didn't have to buy an adapter).

although my sager didn't have the extra ones

 

Yes you'll need the UK power plug, but those should be plentiful over there. Almost ALL AC adapters being sold with computers these days should support 110-250v..

 

Thanks guys.


Geekz, I've never seen an adaptor come with the different plugs. I always wondered if I would have to change the whole adaptor or just the part that plugs into the wall.

I'll have a look for something similar online.

 

What model AC adaptor is it? You'll need something like this:

DELL GN343 UK POWER CORD LEAD FOR PA-2E PA-3E PA-4E PSU | eBay

 

DA180PM111

 

That looks like a special one, not part of the PA-family. What does the AC connector on the brick look like? You might have to get a cord from Dell Spare Parts, the one I linked to is for lower wattage E-series adapters.

 

why not just buy something like this?

Buy Cheap Travel Adaptor Universal Socket UK Standard White, UK Socket Adaptor, Socket Adapter

input accepts U.S. plug, outs to U.K. plug (weird though that it also accepts a U.K plug to out into a U.K. socket).

should have different variations of those in an electronics/hardware store

 

Sometimes the adapters don't fit in well, thus the power cord is a better solution.

 

My sister is using something similar and her battery life is suffering when she does, most likely due to that. If the battery life gets any shorter on my laptop I'll have a desktop.


Thanks for the help though guys, I'll contact Dell tomorrow about the power cord.