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From: Stephen on 16 Jun 2010 09:00
I was out and about yesterday and had the Macbook Pro running from an
inverter in the car. It was working fine. Unplugged and worked for a
while from the battery. When I went to plug the MB into the mains to
recharge it. The power brick popped and took out a fuse and tripped a
breaker.

Was this to be expected or was I just unlucky?

From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 16 Jun 2010 09:06
On Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:00:14 -0700 (PDT), Stephen <srmoll(a)gmail.com>
wrote:

>I was out and about yesterday and had the Macbook Pro running from an
>inverter in the car. It was working fine. Unplugged and worked for a
>while from the battery. When I went to plug the MB into the mains to
>recharge it. The power brick popped and took out a fuse and tripped a
>breaker.
>
>Was this to be expected or was I just unlucky?

Unlucky, I'd say. The power bricks are 100-250V, so won't be affected
by any normal inverter voltage oddities.

Might be worth testing out your inverter to make sure it's doing what
it says it is, mind!

Cheers - Jaimie
--
"the average homeowner should expect to repair direct
meteor damage every hundred million years."
-- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030506.html
From: Rowland McDonnell on 16 Jun 2010 09:47
Stephen <srmoll(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> I was out and about yesterday and had the Macbook Pro running from an
> inverter in the car. It was working fine. Unplugged and worked for a
> while from the battery. When I went to plug the MB into the mains to
> recharge it. The power brick popped and took out a fuse and tripped a
> breaker.
>
> Was this to be expected or was I just unlucky?

An inverter shouldn't do any harm at all. I can't see any reason to
think that the inverter was the cause of the problem - unless it was
faulty.

But: if the inverter did cause problems, seems to me most likely that it
did so on unplugging, don't ask me how - after all, you did run the
MacBook Pro from the inverter for some time, right? And it was all
working properly then, right?

Do remember that your mains electricity comes via an inverter anyway, in
part, if you're close enough to France anyway. There's a big cable
connecting the UK and French national electricity grids so the Froggies
can flog us cheap nuclear electricity. The cable under the channel is
DC with a big inverter/rectifier pair at either end (so we can sell to
the Froggies if the supply/demand situation is that way round).

When I say `big', I really do mean it.

Rowland.

--
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From: Stephen on 18 Jun 2010 08:12
Well I popped into Westfield Apple Store and bought a new 85W Magsafe
power adapter. The new ones have a very nice connector, much better
than the original white magsafe. If you haven't seen one, it is
aluminium, so matches the body of the MacBook Pro, and leads the cable
at towards the rear of the machine, rather than straight out
perpendicular to the side of the machine.

Whether or not it was £60 well spent, I don't know. I found a cheaper
one on eBay for £30, which claims to be a genuine Apple 85W magsafe
PSU. I have ordered one to keep as a spare.

The duff one of course has a magsafe connector on it, and I am hoping
I can create an adapter lead I can connect to my Kensington Air/Auto
PSU.

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