Use a laptop onboard - adapter needed & charges in Clubhouse

Hi all
I'm new, so please be gentle!

I'm flying to New York next week in Upper Class, and would like to use my laptop on board. Do I need to buy an adapter for my laptop, as I think Economy passengers have to, or is the adapter available as part of the Upper Class?
Also, are there charges to pay at the Heathrow Clubhouse for food, spa treatments etc, or are they complimentary?

many thanks

Amber2009

[honey lamb]

Hi Amber and welcome to V-Flyer.

All food, spa treatments, drinks, etc in the Clubhouse are complimentary so sit back and enjoy. A word of advice, the minute you get to the Clubhouse go along to the Spa and book a treatment as they are offered on a first come first served basis

Someone else will come along with advice about using a laptop on board

[Neil]

Just to add a little to what HL has already said, a lot of the treatments in the CH are still free, but certain ones are now chargeable (these tend to be the longer treatments), but the staff will be able to advise which are the free treatments.

You will need to buy an empower adaptor to use your laptop on board. Most major electric places sell them, as do sites like Amazon etc. They did used to be some free for us for UC pax, but this was stopped over a year ago now.

A couple of threads about the laptop leads can be foundhereand here.

Welcome to the site btw
Neil

It's also worth pointing out (for the seat power for the laptop) that the power isn't turned on until the IFE is switched on.

You can tell that the power is on as there is a green glow around the socket. (I've had a couple of flights this year where I've had to ask them to turn the power on.)

Also - it won't charge your laptop - just hold it at the power level it currently it is at.

Thanks to all for your advice.

I presume the inverter has to be 150w:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-Ultr ... 777&sr=8-2

rather than the cheaper 300w:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-AC-Anywh ... omputers_1

Just trying to save a bit of money - don't think Virgin would be impressed if I used alligator clips on board!

Amber

I've just had the following reply from Virgin customer service
"We do not supply laptop tips onboard. You may use your own laptop power lead onboard. A cigarette lighter style adaptor is recommended"

After extensive research (=5 minutes on Amazon) this looks to be cheaper than the Kensington one that Virgin sell onboard, and has other functions as well. I'd be most grateful for your advice on whether this might be appropriate to connect to the power supply onboard

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Targus-Notebook ... roduct_top

Hope this saves someone else a bit of cash as well!

Amber

I use a Mac, so use one of these power adapators

Sorry I can't help you further than my above post.

[Darren Wheeler]

Thanks to all for your advice.

I presume the inverter has to be 150w:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-Ultr ... 777&sr=8-2

rather than the cheaper 300w:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-AC-Anywh ... omputers_1

Just trying to save a bit of money - don't think Virgin would be impressed if I used alligator clips on board!

Amber

Looking at them, the Kensington will work, the Belkin won't as it has car-type connector, not an Empower connector.

It also depends on how much power your laptop draws. The seat sockets are only rated to 75w and if anything higher is drawn, the power cuts out so you may need to use a low-power setting.

Personally i would go for the Kensington 150 inverter for a couple of reasons. The Targus product only powers laptops, whereas the kensington can power any item with a 3 pin plug, so laptops, Games machines, MP3;s etc etc can be powered. It also has a USB socket so can power things that way as well.

I recently got mine from Best Buy for £44.99 the cheapest i could find. If you go through quidco best buy currently have 10% cash back, or through VS shopping channel you can get 3 miles per £ from them.

Thanks to all for your advice. So the Targus and Kensington would both work (and Kensington is recommended & sold by Virgin) with the Targus cheaper but without usb port and 3 pin, but with a range of tips?

Amber

I use a Kensington model DD90. This is a 90W model, with empower or car tip (you pull off the car tip to reveal the empower socket used on VS.
It comes with bag of tips - you choose the correct tip for your laptop. It also has a usb port, so I can charge using USB if I want. If I remember rightly, I read that you need to check the draw of your laptop. Some will work just fine (but not charge the battery). Some will work fine if you remove the battery, some wont work at all as they draw too much current.

VS (like most other airlines) provides just 75W. so your laptop needs to be happy with that for it to work. Most are, they will just not bother with charging the battery.

So if you want to be 100% sure it will work, you need to dig in the laptops specs.

I bought an adapter from Apple that works great with my laptop on Virgin flights

However, I had an irate flight attendant 'demand' that whilst using the in flight power I remove the battery to my laptop

I've got an Apple air that I've had for a few years now. Without an engineering tool kit, WHY would you want to remove the Battery - or the RAM, the CPU, or the hard drive etc. It's a bit like saying 'You can park here. Sir, but could you remove your gearbox first...

What Planet do these people live on????

I bluffed my way out of this by telling the flight attendant that my laptop didn't have a battery - and showing her the underneath of my computer

Bizzarely, she believed me

Peter

[mitchja]

All the newer Apple MacBooks now have a sealed built-in battery anyway so it's impossible to remove batteries from these now.

Mind you, the Apple MagSafe Airline adapters don't actually charge, they just provide power.

It's the charging the battery that has the potential to cause problems but this only only because lap-top manufacturers are cutting costs by using very cheap low quality batteries.

I bought an adapter from Apple that works great with my laptop on Virgin flights

However, I had an irate flight attendant 'demand' that whilst using the in flight power I remove the battery to my laptop

I've got an Apple air that I've had for a few years now. Without an engineering tool kit, WHY would you want to remove the Battery - or the RAM, the CPU, or the hard drive etc. It's a bit like saying 'You can park here. Sir, but could you remove your gearbox first...

What Planet do these people live on????


Peter

ISTBC but, I think Virgin and quite a few airlines made this a temporary policy when there was a lot in the news about laptop batteries (especially apple flavoured ones) exploding and starting fires, so removing the battery would be the safest option.
Apple does annoy me by locking things in, I often get the pinwheel of death and taking out the battery was the simplest thing to do.

ISTBC but, I think Virgin and quite a few airlines made this a temporary policy when there was a lot in the news about laptop batteries.

You are correct - it was indeed policy for a short while to have all batteries removed from laptops if connected to the in-seat power supply.