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How many Watts needed to power MBP?

J

Jamesw

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 4, 2006
83
0
So I'm driving down to North Carolina from Ontario (approx 12 hours?)
I bought this thing where you plug into the cig lighter and I can use it as an outlet. If I wanted to plug my MBP into the plug (which supports max 75W) will it be enough for my MBP? I went to the Apple store and the genius said he wasnt TOO sure but he said it should be okay.
 
I don't think that it's necessarily 85W. I know that the stock power supply is 85W, but you can use less. If you use the regular 65W charger (or a 75W power supply in this case), it will power the MacBook Pro, but won't provide enough power to charge the battery during use. You should be fine using your car charger to power it during use.
 
T-Stex said:
I don't think that it's necessarily 85W. I know that the stock power supply is 85W, but you can use less. If you use the regular 65W charger (or a 75W power supply in this case), it will power the MacBook Pro, but won't provide enough power to charge the battery during use. You should be fine using your car charger to power it during use.
Click to expand...

You're right, actually. The charger that comes with the Macbook (60-65 watts) actually works with the MacBook Pro. Only during especially processor-intensive tasks does the MacBook Pro require all 85 watts.
 
Jamesw said:
So I'm driving down to North Carolina from Ontario (approx 12 hours?)
I bought this thing where you plug into the cig lighter and I can use it as an outlet. If I wanted to plug my MBP into the plug (which supports max 75W) will it be enough for my MBP? I went to the Apple store and the genius said he wasnt TOO sure but he said it should be okay.
Click to expand...

75w will be fine.
 
T-Stex said:
...If you use the regular 65W charger (or a 75W power supply in this case), it will power the MacBook Pro,...
Click to expand...
Regular charger? The one that comes with the MBP is 85W. What do you mean by regular charger?

And the device he's referring to is not a power supply, it's a power inverter that supports a maximum of 75W output. (Maybe not even 75W sustained!) The issue is that the device may detect an overload, as it will try to pull 85W from the unit, and might shut down... or worse, if it does not have an Overload Auto-Shutdown, it may overload this inverter and possibly cause damage to the inverter or blow a fuse, intentionally!
 
They had bigger ones.
I got one from Radio Shack $29.99 US for 75W
They had the Radio Shack $39.99 for the 150W
They also had the Kingston (sold @ apple) 150W for $65 US.
I picked up the cheap one, lets just pray it works out.
 
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