Electric Shocks

[Count Bassy]

Rather late in the day, but Dell notebooks are known for this. There is a problem in the power adaptors that only have the live and neutral connections, ie no earth. With a multimter I can measure 100Vac on the metal parts of the laptop relative to earth! Thankfully its a high resistance so not actually dangerous (so dell Say), but its bloody irritating.

Try Googling 'Dell notebook shock' and you'll get pages of hits. Of course Dell insist that is not a problem and that all notebooks have this 'feature'. Strangley no other makes seem to have pages on the web dedicated to it.

Of course it might be something else. Run your laptop on batteries and see if the problem goes.

If it is the laptop, and its a dell, then give them a call and bollock them!

[escholl]

[quote name='Clive Thorne' post='225261' date='Jun 23 2008, 07:05 PM']Rather late in the day, but Dell notebooks are known for this. There is a problem in the power adaptors that only have the live and neutral connections, ie no earth. With a multimter I can measure 100Vac on the metal parts of the laptop relative to earth! Thankfully its a high resistance so not actually dangerous (so dell Say), but its bloody irritating.

Try Googling 'Dell notebook shock' and you'll get pages of hits. Of course Dell insist that is not a problem and that all notebooks have this 'feature'. Strangley no other makes seem to have pages on the web dedicated to it.

Of course it might be something else. Run your laptop on batteries and see if the problem goes.

If it is the laptop, and its a dell, then give them a call and bollock them![/quote]

It's not just dell adaptors. pretty much any SMPS without an earth input will give around 80-100 Vac, generally on the (-) output, at least IME.

Annoying, but it won't kill you in this particular situation.