poor little guy...

[rivendellrose]

The electrical short that's been plaguing my laptop's power cord finally decided to go well-and-truly splut. No more power cable. And as the poor little squishy was much ill-used by the sales executive to whom he belonged in his prior life, that means no power, because the internal battery can't seem to run more than a few minutes without the cable. *Headdesk*

So now I have a laptop, but no way to use it. Fabulous. And I was just getting used to the whole "writing upstairs where it's warm and there are people" thing. I had even made a nice new desktop wallpaper for him. Guess it's time to start looking into the price of AC adapter cables for Inspiron series Dell laptops. Argh.

Edited to add: Looks like the official Dell site offers refurbished Inspiron 4150 external adapters for $15.95. So that's a place to start, then, with figuring out where else I can get the thing, possibly for cheaper.

Comments

[theladyfeylene.livejournal.com]

Cliche and whatnot, but try Ebay. Seriously. You can click the 'search for Buy Now' option to find good deals you don't need to wait and bid on.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Huh. That might be worth a shot - I'm kind of leery of Ebay generally, but for something like this... I'll definitely look into it. Thanks!

[pauldf.livejournal.com]

FWIW, $16 sounds quite reasonable for an external adapter; I'd be somewhat surprised if you manage to find it cheaper.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been wondering about that - it's a good price. At this point, I think I'm mostly holding out in case it turns out that someone I know has an old one they're not using anymore, but that's not all that likely.

Probably best to just go through Dell, anyway - at least then I know it'll be the right connections and all.

[zhapper.livejournal.com]

That's an amazing price for an OEM replacement part. I'd go for it.

But first, go over to Goodwill in Ballard or downtown and give the big scary rack of wires a look. There's usually hundreds of ac adapters on sale for less than $3. Dell uses the same adapter for a bunch of laptops so finding one shouldn't be all that difficult. Just bring the old one with you so you can compare the old one with the one you pick up. Make sure the connectors, voltage, amperage, and polarity are the same.