US/Canadian Power Adapters & Macbooks

Marc

Marc

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The missus is off to Canada in the morning and she is taking her Macbook.

My boss is Canadian and he lent me his power adapter but she has just tried to plug the power cable from the Macbook into it and it won't go in. The charger from her iphone goes in fine.

I know it's very last minute and too late to order anything now but was just wondering if anyone else had this problem and how you got around it.
 
srichards said:
They won't be the same connector as plugging a 240v into a 120v macbook would kill it. Apple shop over there is probably the best bet.

Or if you have time today an Apple shop in the UK might have the right doodad to take. http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB974ZM/B/apple-world-travel-adapter-kit
Click to expand...

Oh!

She's just dug the box out of the garage and has found the extension cable. The 3-pin plug at the end of that does fit into the adapter. Are you saying that, if she uses it over there, she'll kill the macbook?

She's over there with work and only for a few days, the chances of her getting anywhere near an Apple store are pretty much nil.
 
Surely Apple chargers are multi-voltage, 110-240 volt AC so all that is needed is an adapter to fit the electrical wall socket in Canada?
 
If canada is 220/240v 50hz supply then she should be ok to use that with her UK macbook I would have thought.. If it is a different voltage then it won't work or could cause problems.

Any travel adaptor would need a transformer that made sure it only fed her macbook 240v/50hz regardless of what the input side was.
 
I take back what I said. I looked at the tiny writing on mine and it copes with a massive voltage range so as long as you deal with the plug end you should be ok. It must have a sophisticated transformer in it.
 
youre only normally outputting a few volts (12-20v most of the time) to any laptop so theyre normally rated to work with 100-240v (obviously check the label on the transformer :D)
 
srichards said:
They won't be the same connector as plugging a 240v into a 120v macbook would kill it. Apple shop over there is probably the best bet.

Or if you have time today an Apple shop in the UK might have the right doodad to take. http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB974ZM/B/apple-world-travel-adapter-kit
Click to expand...

You're wrong there.

I have a Canadian MBA and use the same charger, all you need to do is pull off the plug bit and get the US version to plug into it, or just use a standard figure of 8 lead into the slot like I do (which has the added benefit of making the charging cable longer).
 
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