Guys, im looking at getting (another...long story!) faulty laptop of ebay for use as a carputer. Ive found one that looks ideal but he says that it wont charge a battery and thats the only fault.

 

THing is im planning on running it from the cars power anyways most of the time but need some battery power just to shut the laptop down after i leave the car.

 

WOuld it be possible to charge the laptop battery directly off the car and bypass the laptop circuits? or maybe charge the laptop battery every so often in the house say?

 

Cheers all

i used to have a laptop with the same problem...it wouldn't charge the battery...i then took it to pcworld and they told me that the battery was short circuted...and that i needed a new battery.......so i got one then it started to charge it problem solved...

 

It could be the battery but you need it to be checked to be sure....but you can buy adapters for ur car for converting the power supply for you to run the laptop in ur car.......

Ive got an adapter already to run the laptop on my car. Probelm is i would like to use the battery power just to put the laptop in to hibernation. Not a huge draw, but is there any easy way to get the ebay seller to check if its just a battery short or take my chances and then rethink if i cannot get the battery charged?

The only way would be to get the seller to try a new battery. But then he may decide to keep it / sell it for more. Couldn't you just rig the adapter up directly to the car battery (ie bypassing the ignition) then you could use the car battery to shut down the laptop. Maybe use a seperate switch to feed power to the adapter? I'm only thinking ideas out loud but I'd have though it would work ok???

Im having a few ideas myself, but not going to go for this laptop now as someone else has obvious bid daft amount as the price has gone well up! Cheers for the advice guys

Before my clutch bit the dust i was planning on building a mac mini into the car. They are about the size of a pc dvd drive and have an external power supply. Mac OS power managment is 100 times better than xp/windows standby and hibination and would be much better in a car.

 

If you have to use a pc then you can get mini atx mobos which are tiny, Via do them with onboard processors. You can get power supplies with built in 10 second ups's but they are expensive.