I’m puzzled why a laptop requires a specific brand of charger. Usually chargers are pretty generic. You match the voltage and amps to the device. Radio Shack is your friend.
My Dell Laptop charger has a bad connector. I started getting a Nag screen complaining that the charger wasn’t recognized and that I needed a Dell Charger. Then, it started threatening that the battery wouldn’t charge.
Sure enough, after a couple weeks the battery stopped charging. But, the power adapter is running the laptop. It just won’t charge the battery. That’s pretty weird.
I went ahead and bought a replacement Dell Charger using my service tag. But, why are these things so darn brand specific? Do they sell generic laptop chargers?
Why? Because there’s no international standards. It’s the same thing with cellphones, but at least there is a movement to standardize cellphone chargers. Also, laptops have enormous differences in power requirements. It would be wasteful to use a charger that could power a 17" quad-core machine with a netbook. One also needs to take into account differences in jacks. Even if there was a desire to standardize, companies like Apple would never use a standard power jack design - their patented MagSafe connector is so much better than anything else out there.
Using the wrong voltage charger could do some serious damage to an expensive laptop. The makers want to make sure they don’t end up eating that damage as a warranty claim.
There are some regulatory issues as well. The UL and FCC certs. are based on using a specific charger.
Check Ebay, I paid £7.99 for a non-branded charger for my sons Advent laptop.
Advent wanted £34.99 for the genuine charger.
He’s been useing it for about 8 months now with no problems.
That’s an “aftermarket” charger, which is really a different animal. Aftermarket parts are designed to function as replacements for brand-name parts. This is different from a universal charger.
I don’t think that there are any particular smarts to the charger. I think that the notebook can somehow detect the amount of current or perhaps voltage. I’ve bought a couple of non-Dell chargers and none of them have had sufficient power to adequately charge the battery. The last one I bought weighed about a quarter of the real Dell one. And some dick on eBay who sold me one insisted that it worked. I went ahead and checked the unloaded voltage on the charger and it was different than the real one. I’ve got a fucking masters degree in electrical engineering and I know that the fucking piece of shit was not working. I’ve finally just sucked down the ridiculous Dell price. And yeah, the connector sucks. I have seen replacement cables on ebay though.
That’s pretty weird.