[Gllug] Multi-voltage power adaptors

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 7 February 2011 10:58,  <dominicwalden at tesco.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I recently purchased a Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT (for £15 bought as shown) without a power adaptor. It didn't power up when someone tested it for me, but I'd need to get my own adaptor in order to diagnose what the problem is.
>
> So, I have two options. One is to buy a single voltage power adaptor suited for this laptop (for about £20), or buy a multi-voltage adaptor (I was thinking Maplins unless there are better places, for about £25-30). My question is whether there would be advantage to getting a multi-voltage. It would mean that if the Sat didn't work I could always use it for other laptops (thus I don't waste £20). But, would the single voltage be better 'performance-wise' (I dunno if that would be the right way to put it, I know very little about laptops im afraid), would there be a risk with the multi-voltage of being of it lower quality or behaving weirdly (power surges, not sticking to its designated voltage, etc.)?
>
> Hope you all followed that, any help would be appreciated, as you can see I know f-all about laptops (or electricity)!
>

If I was you I would go to amazon or ebay and buy a power brick
specifically for your 4080XCDT.
Otherwise you might run into problems.
For example, Some Dell power bricks use messaging over the DC supply
to ensure the correct compatibility between power brick and laptop.
I recently had problems with a power brick for my dell laptop. On boot
up, the laptop said that "the power supply has failed to identify
itself, laptop battery will not be charged."
After replacing the power suppy, the message never came back.
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