Originally Posted by
WWGuy
A few years back the 230 watt power supply in my M6500 died and I discovered that the 90W PA-10 would either charge the M6500 if it was turned off or keep it running if the battery was already charged.
230W? Ouch. I thought the 170-180W on the M4700 and W520/W530 were heavy enough.
That matches my experience with the M3800, then; I thought you were saying that a higher-wattage supply would work in-seat if the machine was under light load.
After that I carried the extra 90 watt PS when I knew I needed to run the M6500 during extended flights. Not exactly rocket surgery, but it worked.
I've done essentially the same thing in the past year a couple of times.
Now I've got an HP ZBook 15 with 200 watt PS that I can operate similarly with a 90 W Slim AC adapter while flying. I'm not sure if they're pulling a full 90 watts on the plane though.
No idea, although my prior couple of machines were all pretty powerful for machines requiring only 90W supply (same PA-10; E6420/E5430 w/ quad core and business GPU), and never had a problem with on-board use.