European power supply in the US

kakistos153

Honorable
Sep 15, 2012
5
0
10,510
I have had a Satellite c650d-11e laptop for the last 3 years. I moved to the US about 6 months ago and according to HWMonitor the wear on the battery has gone from ~70% to ~64% in that period of time (and its had a lot less usage in that time than before). The AC/DC adapter has been a lot hotter than it used to be too.

It says its input is 100-240V, which should account for the voltage difference between european and american outlets just fine, but its certainly behaving different.

Just tonight i had a weird crash where it froze up and the screen was covered in artifacts. The temperatures are just fine, all sub 50F so the only thing i can really think thats different and could be causing these issues is the voltage difference between european and american outlets.

Is this a silly assumption or does it hold water? I can pick up a new PSU for like 8 dollars so its no biggie to replace it anyways. I just want to make sure that i'm not leaving something more serious untreated. I've also been using hibernate over shut down more often lately too.
 
Solution
Laptop power bricks should be universal. The cable that actually plugs into the A/C outlet is detachable since different region may have a different style A/C outlet.

Batteries themselves can be unpredictable at times. For example, the battery in my old IBM ThinkPad T40 probably lasted about 3 years before the battery life suddenly got cut in half. The battery life of my current Lenovo Y470 got cut in half probably a few months after the 1 year warranty on the battery.

Seeing artifacts on the screen could mean the graphics core / graphics memory may be going bad. If you are using integrated graphics then that could mean the system RAM may have developed a problem and may need to be replaced.

Unfortunately, there is no single solution...
Laptop power bricks should be universal. The cable that actually plugs into the A/C outlet is detachable since different region may have a different style A/C outlet.

Batteries themselves can be unpredictable at times. For example, the battery in my old IBM ThinkPad T40 probably lasted about 3 years before the battery life suddenly got cut in half. The battery life of my current Lenovo Y470 got cut in half probably a few months after the 1 year warranty on the battery.

Seeing artifacts on the screen could mean the graphics core / graphics memory may be going bad. If you are using integrated graphics then that could mean the system RAM may have developed a problem and may need to be replaced.

Unfortunately, there is no single solution because it can be just about anything, but my guess would be it is video RAM related, or system RAM if the laptop is using integrated graphics. Unfortunately, the only way to determine that is to actually replace the current RAM with new RAM. If that does not resolve the problem then you just wasted money on RAM that did not need to be replaced.

You can bring into a repair shop and ask them to diagnose the problem.
 
Solution

andantecantabile

Honorable
Dec 3, 2013
3
0
10,510
I agree with what's been said, I've lived in USA and Germany for long periods of time, never had battery problems, used the same battery (and charger) with the same laptop, didn't even get a new dedicated plug, just used a cheap adapter fitted to my USA plug to use German power.

Sorry I can't hep more, but all I can say is that you are likely having problems that are not connected to the voltage.