Cheap, small laptop with car charger

Cheap, small laptop with car charger

Author
Discussion

BrewsterBear

Original Poster:

1,503 posts

191 months

Saturday 27th August 2016
quotequote all
I'm still shaking down my car and although once it's running happily I shouldn't need to talk to the aftermarket ECU every time, a breakdown last weekend proved how invaluable it would be to have a laptop in the car. It needs to be 12" or smaller, have at least one USB port, run Windows (preferably 7, but I understand this won't be easy on a new machine) and I need to be able to power it from my cig lighter socket.

Does anyone know of anything available? I've seen small laptops in Currys for £150-200, but they don't come with a car charger as such. I know there are inverters available to generate 240Vac from 12Vdc, but it seems a bit overkill to convert 12Vdc to 240Vac to 24Vdc to charge a small laptop.

Thorburn

2,398 posts

192 months

Saturday 27th August 2016
quotequote all
Most Windows tablets use micro-USB, so could charge off a USB cigarette lighter adapter if it'll deliver 2A or more.

Used to have an ASUS T100TA which would fit the bill, touchscreen tablet with keyboard dock that holds the laptop rather than using a kickstand. £130 here: http://amzn.to/2bHoME9

Base has a USB port, main laptop has micro-USB which is used for charging or you can plug in devices with a USB-OTG adapter.

Don't have mine anymore as my dad nicked it to keep in his car for pretty much the same reason!

Edited by Thorburn on Saturday 27th August 09:36

jkh112

21,889 posts

157 months

Saturday 27th August 2016
quotequote all
I have an old Asus netbook I use in the car for similar purposes.
I have a car charger for it, but I bought it separately aftermarket. It did not come as standard.
A quick look on Google shows many sellers offering car adaptor chargers for laptops.

BrewsterBear

Original Poster:

1,503 posts

191 months

Saturday 27th August 2016
quotequote all
Cheers guys. That ASUS looks like it might do the job. I was wary of getting a tablet in case it wouldn't talk to the ECU, but fingers crossed.

andy-xr

13,204 posts

203 months

Tuesday 30th August 2016
quotequote all
The cheap Acer cloudbook in PC World for £149 is a crappy Celeron processor and the screen is awful, but a) it's only £149 and b) the battery life is 10 hours

It's not particularly high powered, but it runs Windows 10 just fine, so I'd imagine if you're not trying to do anything too funky, it'll do what you're asking and not need a charge for a while

BrewsterBear

Original Poster:

1,503 posts

191 months

Tuesday 30th August 2016
quotequote all
I don't imagine Emerald's software is very resource hungry. What put me off buying one of those Acers is the lack ease of charging it in the car. Yes, 10 hour battery life is very good, but you can guarantee it would go dead at exactly the wrong time when you're halfway to the Nurburgring and the car has a wobbly.

Jonesy23

4,650 posts

135 months

Tuesday 30th August 2016
quotequote all
For car power I think a 150W inverter is going to be the way to go. They're cheap and easy to get and will work with pretty much any laptop you can think of, by contrast a car compatible charger is slightly more specialist and probably not going to be any cheaper?

And you can use the inverter for more than one thing.

I know it doesn't seem to be an optimal solution but I suspect it's the practical one.