Seems like a lot of peoples problems are faulty systems on the aircraft, but it did occur to me one possible problem. Many a/c systems on planes can only handle 70-80 watts of draw. My old Gateway drew over 100 watts so it wouldn't ever work on the plane. The old empower systems worked fine however since it was on d/c. I really didn't like the switch from D/C to A/C power on aircraft because they were more restrictive, but I guess people didn't want to carry two adapters.

iGo makes a 70 watt adapter that won't charge your battery as fast but so far has worked fine for me.