Originally Posted by ksong12
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This depends on the airline a lot. Some of them even ban inverters (because they use too much power).
Also, make sure you take a look to see what plug they use; some are regular cigarette plugs, while others are special proprietary ones. A great place to go about that would be Airline Seating Charts, Best Airplane Seats - SeatGuru
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Definitely love seatguru. Very helpful. From what I have seen in airplanes/online, American is one of the only airlines with cigarette-lighter style plugs, while most others have what they call "EmPower" which is the proprietary plug. From what I read about the EmPower system, it allows max 75 watts (for example my Dell adapter is a 65W AC adapter). I have seen inverters rated at 70 or 75W, which, probably, should not max out the power system. If I went with the inverter it would seem to be useful for multiple items--I could plug in anything, rather than the Auto/Air adapter which is limited to powering the laptop.
As for the extended battery, thats a bit of an expense....Dell sucks and wants about $130 for the extended battery, and purchasing elsewhere runs about ~$100. Plus my flight is looking at about 12hrs, each way, so no matter how I cut it, battery power won't last more than 1/3-1/2 of the time, even with the additional battery (not that I really need it to, but I hate when I can't use my laptop b/c its dead).
Thanks for the suggestions. Any more thoughts are appreciated!