I finally got a 12 volt power cord for my laptop! and my starter battery died xD

So fun thing. I totally lucked out yesterday when I got up from my laptop to realize the van battery died! Someone was around almost immediately to jump me :)

I think I was on the laptop for about two hours? plugged in, although not using the power inverter, I was using direct 12volt!

Turns out, the old HP laptop my dad gave me years ago, had a power brick with some nifty features. It has both AC and DC input :) so I found a molting radioshack and got a car adapter with the right size plug and voila! I can charge the laptop without going from DC > AC > DC.

The charger also has a cool feature to choose whether the brick charges the laptop or simply powers it. There is a button on top. When you plug the charger into power, only the 'power' indicator light turns on. Press the button and the 'charging' indicator turns on. I think the idea is that you can conserve energy or use it more efficiently in the machine by choosing.

But I can't blame the laptop for why the battery got down to 11.1 volts... I left my headlights on too! Doh. So, I'm looking forward to see how much I can get away with using the 12volt adapter for the laptop. But I'm starting to really itch for a whole battery setup.