New power cord: Extend the life of your laptop for $49
May 5, 2007
My laptop isn't ancient. It's a dell inspiron 9100 … and it serves most of my purposes fine (which periodically involve needing to 'compute' from the couch or the bed) … but after 2 1/2 years of wear and tear the power cord started to get 'fitzy.'
'Fitzy how?' you ask? : ) … Well it started by only 'powering' when it was in a specific position … and the position got more and more inconvient until last week I had to actually drape it over the screen of the keyboard and hold it in order for the power to connect. Now the battery was fine … so it wasn't as tho I was losing work when the power would cut out. But it was annoying as hell.
I looked around at new laptops, since there are other reasons to upgrade (namely this laptop weighs a ton!) … but I'm not hearing good things about Vista … so I'd rather not go there until some of the early bugs are worked out. So I decided if I could fix the laptop for under $100 … it'd be worth it to try.
I started at Dell and they had what I needed (actually called an Assembly 150-Watt AC Adapter) except that it was
- refurbished
- $90, and
- ships in 1-2 weeks
I wasn't crazy about the refurbished part … but the main dealbreaker was that I didn't think my powercord was going to hang on for 2 more weeks.
So I googled 'laptop power adapters' and found Laptop Parts Now … who had exactly what I was looking for, they called it the Dell Inspiron 9100, PP09L Series Replacement Laptop AC Adapter and even better it was
- new
- $49,
- usually ships same business day
Just to be certain I checked that the Dell product compatibility matched (N3834 - yup!).
And with 2-day shipping I still spent less than what Dell wanted to charge me for the refurbished part. (Oh, and an added bonus the new one is both lighter and smaller than the orignal!)
The $50 Fix
The part arrived, as ordered, 2 days later. I plugged it in and 'voila!' it's working beautifully.
The moral of the story … if your laptop is working fine … but cuts back to battery power even when the power cord is plugged in … a new ac adapter might be just what the doctor ordered. And you too might be able to squeeze another year or so out of the your laptop, and for $50 the price can't be beat!
Addendum
I wanted to also give credit to Foner Books who had an illustrated guide to reparing laptop cords … and if I couldn't find anything else … I might have tried it. But frankly, I'd prefer to have a backup solution in place before I start taking things apart. (Not all that confident in my ability to put it back together again.)
Spread the word
