Go to Radio Shack, Circuit City or other stores and get a 80 ~110 watt inverter. This will
convert DC to AC and you can plug-in you notebook directly into the provided AC plug. You
can also then use is for other low powered devices. They are not too expensive these days
and they are a COTS (Common Off The Shelf) solution.

Dave



"Anonymous" wrote in message
. com...
| It appears very hard to find an AC/DC (Office/Car) adapter for Dell D Series
| laptops that will charge the battery. And what is with the $600 cost of a
| desktop external battery charger? Apparently there are chips in the
| batteries and the chargers that communicate and if either device doesn't
| detect the chip in the other then charging won't take place.
|
| I can see the possibility of there needing to be chips setting up
| handshaking between the battery and the charger for safety - after all a
| fire in a 747 due to an overheated battery could be VERY serious and
| potentially cost Dell a billion dollars or more in lawsuits if it brought
| the plane down. But they don't need to gouge people by charging $600 for a
| battery charger, and they could have worked to make an AC/DC charger
| generally available from retail stores by this time. Applies to the D-800
| Etc.
|
| Am I alone on this?
|
| Derk
|
|