I have a 400w power inverter that I have used many times. It generally works fine, but it wouldn't power my gf's Dell Insperon 8600 last week. After doing some Google research, it sounds like it is because my inverter produces a modified sine wave instead of a pure sine wave.

I was going to order a 150w pure-sine wave inverter to use with the laptop, but I wanted some confirmation before I order it. Do you guys think that is the problem and a decent solution?

Well, you're converting DC->AC->DC, so the logical thing is to try to go DC->DC. Plenty of companies sell laptop car/airplane adapters which might be a better solution.

Matthew

I looked into one made by Targus. It said it would only power the laptop in power saving mode and wouldn't charge it.

I found one by Lind Elec. that provides full power and charges, but it costs more than the 150w pure-sine inverter I found. I would rather have an inverter because it has more uses, even if I don't have more at the moment. At the least, the inverter should work on future laptops, which the adapter probably wouldn't.

I don't have a Dell 8600, but I do have a Dell Inspiron 9300. And I have successfully used a $25 AC 175W Jenson(?) inverter from Future Shop (owned by Best Buy) to power/charge it.

Similar to this one, but lower-powered and only one outlet.

cheers

Does it have the barrel plug with a smaller center pin? I thought I read somewhere that this adapter required the pure-sine wave inverter.

I've powered other laptops with my inverter. The only problem I ran into there was while running audio through the aux input on the empeg, I got a lot of static while plugged in. The sound was perfect while running off battery though. Do you think this could be caused by a cheap inverter? Would a pure-sine inverter fix this too? Would just a DC->DC adapter fix this?