Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has started an excellent thread on the Apple Discussion forums about the lack of a good airplane charging solution for the MacBook Pro. It looks like Apple needs to take some action on this issue or risk losing a lot of frequent flying potential MBP sales. Click through to read the rest of the thread.
I’d be interested in whether people think this problem is specific to my machine, or general.
I do too much travel on planes. I therefore couldn’t begin to use my MPB until I could buy 3 batteries (about a month after I got the machine), and I also had to buy an inverter, since I couldn’t find any iGo like tip to connect to the new magnet connection.
The first inverter I got was a Targus. It promised 90w – above the reported 85w drawn by the machine. Four flights, never would it work. Everytime, it would trip because too much power was demanded. I then bought a "CyberPower" inverter, promising 120w. That worked for a good 3 hours on an internatinoal flight, but then it began flaking as well. I then discovered that if I had a fully charged battery (so it wasn’t trying to charge), it worked fine. So the obvious "solution" is either to have a fully charged battery, or to remove the battery — though that’s obviously a bit dangerous, since the cord disconnects from the laptop so easily.
This is a big problem with the machine. Is it just mine, or is it general? And is there any useful way to control how much power the unit draws? Notice, the processor speed control has been removed from the Energy Saver panel.
Apple – Support – Discussions – the problem with airplanes and the MBP …
technorati tags: macbookpro, inverter
Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has started an excellent thread on the Apple Discussion forums about the lack of a good airplane charging solution for the MacBook Pro. It looks like Apple needs to take some action on this issue or risk losing a lot of frequent flying potential MBP sales. Click through to read the rest of the thread.
I’d be interested in whether people think this problem is specific to my machine, or general.
I do too much travel on planes. I therefore couldn’t begin to use my MPB until I could buy 3 batteries (about a month after I got the machine), and I also had to buy an inverter, since I couldn’t find any iGo like tip to connect to the new magnet connection.
The first inverter I got was a Targus. It promised 90w – above the reported 85w drawn by the machine. Four flights, never would it work. Everytime, it would trip because too much power was demanded. I then bought a "CyberPower" inverter, promising 120w. That worked for a good 3 hours on an internatinoal flight, but then it began flaking as well. I then discovered that if I had a fully charged battery (so it wasn’t trying to charge), it worked fine. So the obvious "solution" is either to have a fully charged battery, or to remove the battery — though that’s obviously a bit dangerous, since the cord disconnects from the laptop so easily.
This is a big problem with the machine. Is it just mine, or is it general? And is there any useful way to control how much power the unit draws? Notice, the processor speed control has been removed from the Energy Saver panel.
Apple – Support – Discussions – the problem with airplanes and the MBP …
technorati tags: macbookpro, inverter
