Travel Technology - Empower ports on airplanes

I've made the following conclusions after doing much research on airplane "empower" power outlets:

1) Empower ports on airplanes can only provide 70W of power. (???)

2) Many new laptops (including mine) are rated for 90w of power. (pretty sure about this one)

3) It is probably possible to pump 70W of power into a 90W laptop. However, manufacturers would never condone this due to possible damage to your laptop. (???)

4) I should probably (at my own risk) buy a 70W airplane notebook adaptor or airline power invertor.

Its taken me countless hours of research to draw these simple conclusions (mainly due to lack of info on "empower" specs). Can anyone verify any of them by providing a link or personal experience?

Carl

Out of luck http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/smile.gif

The ONLY option MAYBE is a charger that will run the battery charge cycle at the lower wattage but you WILL run off batteries swapping them out as they are low. I've NOT yet seen one of these, however SOME mfr's USED to have desktop cradle battery charges, I'm sure they would work with an APC AC-DC adapter.

I however have given up and have gone back to lower wattage notebooks with Pentium M processors and I DO avoid the P4 processors now for a notebook.

Only wanted to add that some Dell laptops have both a 70W and a 90W AC adapter.

I seem to recall there being some laptops that will run off of lower power adapters but not charge the battery.

While you won't be able to charge your 90 Watt + notebook battery with the Empower, you will be able to use the outlet and run your notebook in the seat.

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 (which normally uses 90W) and purchased the empower adaptor for it from Dell (which supplies 70W). When plugged into the empower, the BIOS in the computer flashes a message on the screen explaining that when using a 70W power supply, the machine won't operate at "full power" and that operation will be scaled back accordingly. Once you dismiss this message, it operates normally as far as I can tell. I'm not sure quite what it decides not to do at full power when in 70W mode. The three most obvious things would be to run the CPU slower (which it does normally anyway to conserve battery), not have the screen quite as bright, and not charge the battery. But, I've never noticed anything different myself.

If you pull the battery out that could in fact lower the power draw quite a bit.

Thanks guys. This info helps a lot.