We have an inverter/drive corrector, and could plug that into one of our
17AH 12volt batteries, and then plug the laptop's AC adapter into the
inverter. That seems inefficient, and maybe there is a good reason not to
power the laptop this way.

Would it be reasonable to make an adapter to plug the laptop directly into
the 17AH battery, or is there some reason this would be bad for the laptop?



HI Alan:

If your laptop can use 12 volt DC input power, that's a fine solution.
Unfortunately, most of them use some other voltage. What most people do is run
them off inverters. You might want to head down to Radio Shack and get one of
their modern inverters which are actually quite good. They also have some
adapters that will allow you to plug your laptop directly into a battery, and
you might want to check to see if one of these might work for you.


Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
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