aussie bongo wrote:
"Lobster" wrote in message
...
I'm thinking of buying an 12V - 240V for the car, to enable me to
charge/run devices such as a laptop / mobile phone(s) / AA batteries for
gameboys & camera etc etc while on the road (one at a time!); they seem to
be as cheap as chips these days and this would enable me to use the
standard mains chargers for all the above devices rather than buying
separate low voltage kit to connect each of them up to the cigar lighter.

Sounds good in theory, but are there any gotchas? Eg, safety? Does it run
a car battery down more to power up a laptop via a 240V inverter than
directly to the cigar lighter? etc etc

Can't help feeling an inverter would be much better if wired or plugged
into the car some other way than via the god-awful universal cigar-lighter
plug...

Thanks
David

i dont know about power usage on a laptop, but,
i do know that 100w drawn from an inverter at 240v, will give you less than
1/2hours usage.

Car bateries are 40-70Ah, and at a nominal 12v, that is 480-840Wh.

Giving and expected uptime at npominal 80% eficiency of say 4-8hrs roughly.

one thing to remember if you get one, is that you have to make sure it is
turned off with no power going into it whilst starting the car as to do so
will damege the inverter.

Total ******** as well.