MacBook Pro on airplanes

I read quite a disturbing post on another forum that suggested that the MacBook Pros draw too much current when plugged in to a standard airplane power socket, which thus shuts off. This apparently is true at least for the 17" if the battery is not fully charged. Does anyone know if it's true of the 15"?

Apparently this is the same for mnay other laptops, but with those there are options for lower wattage power supplies, but that with Apple's unique connector/power supply, this seems to be a problem. Anyone have any experience of this?

I can't imagine buying a laptop if it's not usable when plugged in on an airplane - those trans-atlantic flights are too long for a single battery, not to mention when I fly to Australia.

 

I don't know much about the power issue, but if you are looking to get a MBP for travel on long airplane rides you may want to look at something smaller than 15.4" notebook. Anything over 14" becomes a little annoying to try to use comfortably in confined spaces like that in my opinion. That's one of the things that forced me to move down from a 15.4 to a 13.3. Much easier to use on a tray table or lap.

 

Maybe he's rich enough to go first-class only.

 

Heh. I wish.

No, but I need a laptop with decent performance and connectivity, but that I can use on long plane trips.

Looks like my eagerly awaited return to the Apple fold will have to wait. Sony SZ or Dell M1210 for me I suppose... Ah well, I'll be running Linux on it anyway, so at least I'll be Winblows-free.

 

Yeap, they're good choices all right. If you want top build quality though, I'd go for the Sony. Dell (apart from their business line) were never known for building sturdy notebooks. Also, don't forget the ASUS W7J. Same specs (GeForce Go 7400 and T2400 CPU) as the two and should be $100 USD cheaper.

 

I'm following up on this thread rather than starting on another one: What are people using in terms of power source since most on Air adapters such iJuice do not yet have the new MbPs adapter for sale. How are people using their MbPs on long transcon/transpac/atlantic flights? 2 batteries? Get an AC adapter and plug Apple's adapter into?

 

If you're aiming for a M1210 ou Vaio SZ then the equivalent would be a Macbook, which draws less current, not a MBP. Anyway, if you plan to run Linux, you should take a look at how well the hardware is supported - AFAIK Core Duo support is not that good under Linux right now, and Sony's machines are well known to be a driver nightmare even in windows.

 

Hmm...

Before giving up on the MBP, I'd try finding out the wattage the adapter on the notebook draws and how much power the outlet on the plane provides.

 

SMP kernels have been around for a long time and seem to do quite well with Core Duo. On the other point, being an SZ owner I can vouch for the driver hassles, especially with this machine having more than one GPU. I run Fedora Core 5 on my SZ, but only under virtulization with VMWare Player which does quite well if you free up enough memory for it to run comfortably (about 700MB or more. Going above that number with 1GB of RAM and you start running into swapping).