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    Power inverter for laptop.

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by crinzema, Dec 19, 2007.

  1. crinzema

    crinzema Notebook Evangelist

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    I bought a power invert for my car to use my laptop while on the road. I've found out that power inverters either output true sine wave power or a modified sine wave power. Does anyone know if my inspiron 9300 can use a modified sine wave power?
     
    crinzema, Dec 19, 2007
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  2. StormEffect

    StormEffect Lazer. *pew pew*

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    As long as you are plugging your laptop power supply into the inverter and not plugging the inverter directly into the laptop, shouldn't the power supply take care of power modulation? As long as you've got that DC into AC, doesn't it take care of the rest?

    That's my lame and uneducated assumption, anyone else know?
     
    StormEffect, Dec 19, 2007
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  3. crinzema

    crinzema Notebook Evangelist

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    I've called Dell to see if they could resolve this issue. But they only gave me people as educated in computers as my mom. Any suggestion with getting a more educated support person?
     
    crinzema, Dec 19, 2007
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  4. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    Modified sine waves, are standard but elongated sine waves. Literally instead of rounded peaks below and above the x-axis, they are simply trapezoids. This means that the current has a linger pulse length, and is suitable for very picky electronics such as computers and such. Dont worry, the power inverter wont mess up anything, I have and use one too.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Dec 19, 2007
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  5. star882

    star882 Notebook Evangelist

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    And actually, modern digital power supplies will accept 170v square wave AC or even 170v DC (170v roughly the peak of 120v sine wave AC) without any problems. In fact, they often actually operate more efficiently on square wave AC or DC (of the same peak voltage) than they do on sine wave AC.
     
    star882, Dec 19, 2007
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