car charger for the macbook

I was at the local Apple Store and asked they very question. I was told there wasn't one, but a 12volt inverter would certainly work. The Mac transformer is rated at under 70watts, so there's a lot of choices.

At Wal-Mart, there's a 100 watt inverter for $19.93. Just plug the Mac transformer into it, route your cables out of the way and you are done.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4891078
Item Description

Great for use with laptops, cellphones, and other mobile electronics, Whistler's 100-watt power inverter provides convenience on the road by converting 12-volt DC power to 110-volt AC power. Offers 100 watt continuous power, and a maximum surge capacity of 200 watts.10 amp power requirement.

MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.6) G4 Tower, Atari ST with Mac Plus emulator

One thing to keep in mind is that power inverters are horribly inefficient. I would suggest keeping the car running while you are powering the laptop with an inverter otherwise you are going to find yourself with a dead battery surprisingly fast. They have to draw a lot of power to convert it to A/C and then the brick converts it back to D/C. It wastes lots of power which only means that it will drain your car battery much faster than if a true auto charger existed for the MacBooks.

But with that in mind, it works fine...

Agreed!

Our Magsafe Airline adapter DOES charge the battery in Airlines AND work in cars!
NO INVERTERS!

3 months of happy customers!!

http://mikegyver.com

Hawaii2484: It is unlikely the inverter would harm your computer. It is the laptops power supply (transformer) job to provide safe power to your computer. There are also tolerances built into most electronic devices to allow a narrow range of power and it still work fine.

As for training your battery, this is true if you have an older battery. They are only like 60 percent efficient. SO if you are drawing 80 watts, you are actually pulling around 120 watts to feed your lappy.

You will find that because of this problem, older batteries can not provide enough AMPs to the inverter to power it while the engine is not running. This is especially true on cars that are over 7 or 8 years old.

ALl of this is based of my past usage of a "Wagon Tech" 140Watt inverter. It has provided power to a variety of devices over the years including my current MacBook.

- Kiteless

FWIW, I use the same Kensington 120W AC/DC adapter with the WinXP laptop from The Employer and I'm a big fan of it - don't know how quickly it charges but has no trouble running a more power-hungry hp laptop. Never tried it in airplane seat, but from AC will operate the computer, charge the computer, and charge cell phone at the same time daisy chained from a USB port on the computer, although charging is somewhat slow in that configuration.

Also got a tip for it to charge my iPod, so I only need one power gizmo when I travel no matter where I'm working. No reason to think it won't work just as well with a Magsafe adapter. I do wonder tho, how long before Kensington comes out with the Magsafe tip...

Do i understand you well that you say you use an Magesafe airplane adapter in your car. Because at the site they say that you can't use it in a car

Hans

He said the one they sale works, not apples. See the link in his post.


Mort

i will suggest to you to bye a extra battery like i did.