You can’t run your hair dryer off the cigarette lighter adapter with ANY inverter.
It is not possible to get 400W of Power from a cigarette lighter adapter, regardless of which inverter is used. To get larger wattage from the more powerful inverters requires hooking them directly to the battery. The max output from a cigarette lighter adapter is generally estimated between 90-150W. I have a 90W inverter in the car for charging the various toys I keep on me, and a 700W I occasionally use off the car battery in place of a generator. For more details:
The B&D battery packs only output 20 watts maximum (momentary spike), 16 watts normal. While enough for portable DVD players, PDAs, cell phones, and iPods, they are not enough for laptops. Oh, and the B&D power packs did not come with car adapters. You could use this to power your B&D in the car.
I bought one of these inverters several years ago (2003-ish??). It does what it says on the box. The strange design is meant to allow it to be placed in a cupholder. It “complains” when I first turn on my Dell D600 laptop, but only for a moment. I’m guessing 90 watts is the peak rating (eg. it can handle spikes of 90, but not continuous), and 70 watts is the normal. My laptop has an initial spike of around 85 watts and settles down to 45 watts.
A Kill-A-Watt is very useful for determining how big of a inverter you need for a device. While it’s possible to get this information from a device’s label, they usually state the MAXIMUM power requirements (eg. 120V @ 2A = 240 watt). The “real” power consumed during normal use can be much lower. The trouble with powering blenders and hair dryers is finding an inverter that can handle the initial “inrush” current.
PS - As a matter of fact, my plan is to use the one I have with the B&D battery pack to provide power for my daughter’s “portable” DVD player on trips. The DVD player has a brain-dead design in which you cannot have the battery inserted AND be powered from external power at the same time. The battery isn’t enough for an entire trip, and our Honda turns off the power ports when the engine is off. What to do? Inverter + B&D battery pack + DVD wall-wart = Dotter doesn’t lose her spot in a movie when we make a rest stop.
PPS - This inverter is not enough to power a Envoy Arerosol Compressor (aka abutorol vaporizor). a 100W or larger inverter is needed.
Ah, I already havea gemini 300 watt inverter, but the cord is short for where I have it secured. Bought this one to replace the gemini since 90 watts is plenty enough to recharge my cell phone or mp3 player and fits in the cup holder in my truck. It also won’t let me drain the battery dry on long trips.
so if I hook 4 of the B&D supplies in Parallel. I can charge them from this while still getting all that B&D goodness into my laptop to watch movies while I drive! Brilliant!
LOL! Did you even bother to check the specs before using it?? Even cheap blenders start at about 300W and consumer models can easily be 500W or even over 600W.
The biggest MBP power supply is 85W. So while you’d be pushing this inverter’s operational limits, it should be OK as long as you’re not maxing out the Mac’s CPU, HD and optical the entire time it’s in use.
This makes perfect sense to me! Hewlett Packard wants USD63.99 (after rebates) plus shipping and handling for a 90-watt adapter that will only function with my Compaq V3000 laptop. What’s worse, Sony doesn’t even offer a mobile adapter for my Vaio! Duh! Isn’t the point of having a laptop computer to be mobile? What is Sony thinking?!
Note that in some cases (like for my old car) the lighter connection could be old/dirty and reduce the power.
Also, my car charger can recharge the laptop battery when the laptop’s off, or run the laptop when the battery’s fully charged, but not both at the same time. Ie, if the laptop’s on when the battery’s not fully charged, the charger only has enough power to keep the laptop going, while the battery slowly loses its charge.
Ie, making sure the laptop battery’s fully charged before going on a trip is necessary for some power supplies, for some laptops.
Whoops… almost forgot say my main point wrt this Targus power supply… so some laptops will get enough power to run all day on this device only if the battery’s already fully charged when you plug into it.
Just received mine DOA. Gives a continuous failure beep as soon as I plug it in, even when I’m not trying to power anything with it. (There’s nothing wrong with the 12V input… more like 13.5V, and it powers all other 12V stuff just fine.)
How could they even let this thing go out the door? This was either human error, or purposeful rippoff. Come on Targus, I used to think your stuff was always good.
Well, I received my Targus 90 Watt Mobile Power Inverter ten days ago. It seems to function well enough. In other words, I can plug it into my truck’s cirgarette lighter socket and plug my laptop into the power inverter and nothing smokes or smells like it’s burning. And, the battery icon in the system tray on my laptop even indicates that it’s running on AC power. How neat is that?!
The only thing that surprised me is that the power inverter looked kind of beat up when I received it. In my prior experiences with refurbished goods (albeit not through Woot!), it seems that the items I purchased were always prettied up so they looked like new as well as functioning like new. Oh well, I’ll live…
For those of whom are curious, here’s the journey my power inverter took to get to me:
Date Time Description Location
April 18, 2008 3:44 PM Delivered EXTON,PA
April 18, 2008 8:47 AM DC/EVS Arrive EXTON,PA
April 18, 2008 8:35 AM USPS Entry EXTON, PA
April 18, 2008 5:00 AM Sortation Center Departure POTTSTOWN, PA
April 17, 2008 10:35 PM USPS Electronically Notified EXTON,PA
April 17, 2008 12:26 PM Sortation Center Arrival POTTSTOWN, PA
April 17, 2008 8:29 AM Sortation Center Departure MARTINSBURG, WV
April 16, 2008 4:14 PM Sortation Center Arrival MARTINSBURG, WV
April 15, 2008 10:47 AM Sortation Center Departure DALLAS, TX
April 14, 2008 4:03 PM Sortation Center Arrival DALLAS, TX
April 14, 2008 3:20 PM Pickup CARROLLTON, TX
