Buying a New Laptop

[Billy Crook]

The pin does not "identify the cord as genuine Dell".  That is
propagandist bullshit, but who is surprised?  The pin allows the power
adapter to communicate with the laptop and convey its maximum
supported load.  Many Dell laptops, mine included, are capable of
demanding an extraordinary amount of electricity under heavy use while
recharging a battery.  They also have a 'speed charging' thing that
draws significantly more power to allow you to recharge batteries
faster.

My power brick's max output is 250 watts, and I can recharge a 2.5 hr
runtime battery in 15 minutes.  While loading down four cores, and
saturating 16GB of ram and two sata drives worth of disk IO.  If I
instead used a power brick that didn't have that capacity, the battery
would charge slower and various buses would throttle down to
accommodate the lower available power.

Random power adapters could possibly fit the same hole, and supply the
same voltage, but pose a fire hazard if placed under the same load.
Their voltage could also sag under the load, causing increased current
inside the laptop, possibly damaging it internally.  Try powering your
1A cable modem off a 150ma power adapter and see what happens.

The magic pin tells the laptop to draw less power by not charging the
battery.  It's newer, and more complicated than 'the old way'.  This
is a *computer* we're talking about.

I have never had my pin break or bend, in 7-ish years of having Dell
laptops, and at least 5 different power bricks.  The Dell power
connectors are also significantly larger diameter than IBMs, which
makes it less likely to damage should some asshat tilt your laptop
onto the power connector, or yank it sideways.

You shouldn't be using some random-ass power supply to charge your
laptop anyway, unless you want to break it, and in that case don't
complain that something isn't working.

The only bad thing I have to say about my Dell Precision M6400 is that
the thumbprint reader doesn't support GNU+Linux.  The one on my IBM
laptop does.  Dell is also not the right brand for people that think
they shouldn't have to pay for physical goods.

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 13:51, Jack <quiet_celt at yahoo.com> wrote:
> and other problems.

Which other problems?  Specifically.

</rant>