Heya all

I have an aeroplane adapter for my laptop that plugs into a cigarette-style adapter.

I was told by an apple shop techie that normal cars' cigarette lighters are not suitable to charge my laptop with as the power is not regulated and it could damage the laptop.

Is this true?

chuck a multimeter in there and check

Nope straight cable :-) adapter is not regulated

If that was the case it wouldn't be any good for charging anything, I've never heard of someone damaging a mobile phone with their ciggie lighter, and dad has his laptop plugged into the car ciggie most days of the week and has done for months now, and it still works.

Thing is though he may be using a proper car adaptor, my stepmum has one for her Dell and it's a big massive thing.

Having a look at the Apple one it looks to be a straight cable (I thought it had a box in it), so I wouldn't be trusting my laptop to that one, especially since they make a point of saying it isn't designed for car use...

http://store.apple.com/au/product/MB441Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDEwMQ&mco=MjE0ODI2OQ

by not regulated i think they mean pure and non pure sine... i know nothing abuot it, all i know is that you can buy like $1000 pure sine power inverters, or cheap ones like the one you have

im sure it'll be fine

your thinking of an inverter, which steps 12V up to 240V, only problem, is the sign wave of the power is like a square, not rounded, and apparently this kills laptop batteries. i got around this by removing the battery and running it off the inverter power. a inverter that produces pure sine wave costs like 1000.
look it up at jarcar electronics.
as for the plug your using pete, if it says its not for automovive use, then its not.
use it on a areoplane.
having said that, Jaycar has a product, that does cars and aircraft. MP-3468 $79.95

Problem is finding one that will work with the MacBook Pro...

Yeah, I was thinking of just buying a cheap inverter and using a standard 240v power adapter.......

The standard power adapters are only 85w so a cheap inverter should do the trick

Thanks for your help anyway guys