Laptop Power Supply and Surge Protection

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daylightTP2 min 34 sec – Jul 28, 2006Security camera footage of a laptop being stolen, in broad daylight. To read the story – see http://www.stubbedtoe.co.nz/blog/blog.php?blog=10 The guy hasn’t yet been caught. [ Google Blog Search: Laptop ]Laptop Power Supply and Surge live.pirillo.com – Recently, long time chatter CamBlack came to me for help with his mom?s laptop. I was able to hook them up with HP, who replaced the laptop for her. Now, Cam is wondering about whether or not a laptop needs a

You’re partially right that “The more you pay, the more protection you’ll get.” A major exception is the class of very expensive surge protectors sold to “audiophiles” with more money than sense — you know, the ones that will pay $500 for a volume control knob because they believe the vendor’s hype that violates the laws of physics. The second major exception is that virtually all surge protectors, including the multi-$K ones sold to sucker audiophiles, use MOV’s. It’s true that some MOV protectors are more effective than others. But all of them lose effectiveness with every surge they protect, and all of them wear our sooner or later, and you don’t know how much, if any, protection you currently have. The best surge protector I know about is made by Zero Surge, and uses no MOV’s. It ranges in price from a couple hundred to a thousand dollars.Their web site provides the evidence of comparative effectiveness. I have no relationship to Zero Surge except as a long time very happy customer. I have a Zero Surge in front of my UPS and another after it (UPS’s can fail in a way that generates killer surges on their outputs, I found out the hard way).

Most people keep the laptop’s battery in place while using it connected to the AC outlet (not a good idea, but that’s not the point of this discussion). As such, the laptop has a built-in UPS – should the grid’s power fail, you still have plenty of time to save your work and shut down the laptop gracefully.

I agree that surge-protecting a laptop is a good idea, but I don’t see any benefit in using a UPS for it (at least if you keep the battery in it while using it on AC).

Alex

Laptop power supplies do quite a bit more than just filter the electricity that is running through the power cord. The one that came with my Dell Inspiron drops the voltage from 110 to 19.5, raises the amperage, and converts it from AC to DC.