Solved! Powering Laptop in a Car and also Laptop Buying Suggestions/Input?

Jettatore

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Feb 25, 2007
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My primary question is this. I'm thinking of buying a laptop that likely doesn't have a super long battery life. The one I have in mind is an Asus G71GX-RX05.

I intend to drive to work super early, like 4 -5 hours early, to beat out the horrendous traffic, and just set up a mini-office in my car. My question is how to keep the thing powered for up to 4-5 hours?

I don't mind buying a second battery for the computer (but I'm not sure if this would even cover the time and I'm not sure how easy/feasible it will be to recharge both batteries overnight every night...), or I could get some sort of power adapter for the car?? And I do plan to occasionally turn the car on to keep the air conditioner/heat going depending on the time of year but I don't want to waste an extraordinary amount of gas considering how much gas costs. I also don't mind carrying a spare car battery in the car, in case one of these ideas just drains the car battery dry.

What are my best options here?

And second question, what do you think of the Asus G71GX-RX05 overall for $780 USD??

Are there better deals to be had in about the same power/price range? If anything even something slightly under this computers power but for a lot cheaper would be better (I can't go more expensive unless there is an unreal difference in price/preformance), as money is tight right now, but it looked like a good deal to me, as that is about as powerful as my home computer at least in terms of numbers. Suggestions, recommendations and alternative ideas are appreciated.

Main use for the laptop would be some gaming (Team Fortress 2 for example), but mostly Photoshop (with attached USB Wacom) and some 3D work in Softimage and Mudbox, both of which preform well on my desktop NVidia GTX 260.

G71GX-RX05 - Specs
Built-in devices: Four speakers, Bluetooth antenna, Status OLED display, Wireless LAN antenna, Integrated 1.3 Megapixel webcam
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 / 2.53 GHz, Intel P43 Express
Cache memory: L2 cache, 3 MB
Ram: 6 GB / 6 GB (max), DDR2 SDRAM - 800 MHz, SO DIMM 200-pin
Hard drive: 500 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 5400 rpm
Optical Drive: DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM
Supported flash memory cards: Memory Stick , MultiMediaCard , SD Memory Card , xD-Picture Card, Memory Stick Duo , Memory Stick Pro
Display type: 17.1 in TFT active matrix, Max Resolution 1440 x 900 ( WXGA+ )
Graphics processor: Vendor NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M
Video memory: 1 GB GDDR3 SDRAM

Thank you for your time and input in advance, best regards. -Jet
 
Solution
Unless you need the DVD installed all the time get the second battery.
Also see if you can upgrade the first battery.
Buy a 250-300 watt inverter that plugs into the cigarette ltr/pwr adapter and keep the laptop plugged in.( will run coffee maker too) I also recomend the 3g usb adapter for internet.
Don't surf and drive it could be distracting!
I'll leave the second question to someone else but I like the specs.

mhelm1

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Jun 3, 2010
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Unless you need the DVD installed all the time get the second battery.
Also see if you can upgrade the first battery.
Buy a 250-300 watt inverter that plugs into the cigarette ltr/pwr adapter and keep the laptop plugged in.( will run coffee maker too) I also recomend the 3g usb adapter for internet.
Don't surf and drive it could be distracting!
I'll leave the second question to someone else but I like the specs.
 
Solution