I recently went on a twelve hour road trip and I really wanted to bring my laptop with me so I could do some work in the car.  I figured it would be a great way to pass the time while getting something useful done.  As any laptop owner would know, your battery life greatly decreases after having it for awhile and in my case I don’t really have any charge left at all, so I decided to look into buying a car adapter.

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and an adapter for it was going to cost me around $60 after taxes and shipping.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend that much money for what was probably going to be a one time use.  I then came across power inverters.  The power inverter was appealing for several reasons.  For one they cost about half the price of the Dell car adapter and two I would be more likely to be able to use it in the future with a different laptop or another household device.

I was hesitant to get the power inverter at first because I wasn’t sure if it would have enough power to run my laptop, but after reading several reviews of people saying they used it for their laptop I decide to get it.  I picked up a Black & Decker 100 Watt Power Inverter on Amazon for less than $30 after taxes and shipping.  I am glad that I made the purchase.  I didn’t have any issues powering my laptop with it.  My only complaint is a small fan runs in the unit to keep it cool. You wouldn’t have to deal with the fan noise using the car adapter, but the minor inconvenience was worth saving 50% and having the ability for reuse in the future.