What say Ye experts about A/C adapters?

I just bought a CF-29 (great deal) but it came with a 19 volt 3.42 Amp Lenovo A/C adapter. Apparently it works fine, as the previous user appears to have had no problems with it. I have not had any *apparent* problems either. But I always thought that too much voltage (according to what is OEM) is bad.

I have found (since charging this laptop) that the adapter *should have been* rated for 15.6 volts 5 Amps. What do you think? Do I need to order a new A/C adapter?

 

I would. No reason to chance blowing a fuse or worse. Get a genuine Panasonic or a compatible IBM charger.

 

A friend recently fried her motherboard by plugging in the wrong A/C adapter on her Acer laptop. So, I took your advice. I ordered a genuine Panasonic A/C adapter. I guess surviving the over-voltage is another testament to the toughness of these laptops.

 

As long as you get within half a volt and/or half an amp of the original, your laptop will never know the difference. If you find one that has larger amperage rating, that is fine; as long as the voltage rating is the same (or within half a volt +\-). I used a 9amp brick for years on an HP ZE2000 that only required 3.75amp; the only difference was it never even got warm under that relatively tiny load.

It used to be that laptops were pretty ignorant of the power supplied to them; either they got enough or they didn't and shut down or switched over to battery. However, the Dell in my sig and the HP DV4000 I built for my wife last winter are both a bit more sophisticated.

I have several chargers I use for either of them; I usually keep the one that is physically smallest in the bag (sometimes that's the OEM, sometimes not) and leave the others plugged in at my desk/bedroom/office as is convenient. Whenever I plug either of them into the smaller AC adapter of the lot, they will pop up a warning if the battery is very low (and therefore drawing a lot of current to charge) telling me that my adapter is not rated for the load, and that battery recharging will take longer than usual as long as the laptop is on.

Now they're making the AC adapters so they talk to the laptop too; identifying themselves as healthy, correct model, genuine or not via digital communications over the SMBUS just like any other computer peripheral. Soon, this area of hackage will vaporize just like battery rebuilding did.

mnem
Bic-lighter laptops... meh.

 

Yeah, that's what I've always heard, that too much voltage is not good. It is supposed to be 15.6 volts, and is 19 volts instead. Yikes!! I'm not using it until I have the OEM Panasonic one I ordered. I know that off-brand ones work just fine, but I have found that OEM adapters last longer. (Unless you bend the cables at the boot too much.)

 

For what little it may be worth, for years, I have used IBM Thinkpad 540/600 power supplies for Panasonic CF-Wx and CF-Yx laptops. The IBM units have the same voltage (16), amp (2.5) and polarity (center positive) as the original Panasonic units. Also, they are very cheap on eBay.

Dave

 

Yes

Do not use this , 19v is too high