Originally Posted by
HereOrThere
On my next international flight, I had a 45W adapter for a different Dell. I was able to use that adapter on my M3800 on the new AA 777 (though it gave the usual warnings). It wasn't great (then again the inflight wifi was satellite based so that wasn't that great either).
I don't have a 45W to try, but when I tried a 65W it acted like there wasn't even an adapter plugged in, and appeared to be actually running the battery down rather than just throttling.
I'm complaining to Dell to see if they can do anything about it (like decrease the initial spike and provide power management software to ramp things down) but what will probably work better is using buying a 90W adapter and carrying that around too.
That's what I've ended up doing. It throttles a bit (especially the GPU) and will only charge the battery with the power off, but it's usable.