Power Efficient Computer Monitor Upgrade?
Hopefully this separate thread will eliminate hijacking another. Many RV'ers including myself use laptops instead of desktop units. But the 17" laptops seem to gobble laptop battery power at an ast...
Forum Discussion
DC-DC booster vs inverter and laptop AC-DC adapter? Some boosters are quite inefficient, like 80% or less. But I don't think this is important. With 1.5-2 hours on laptop a day you will draw 6 or 8AH daily, together with external monitor or TV. The difference between the worst and the best power scenario will be under 1 AH.
You don't have to play Moonlight Sonata from laptop if energy budget is really tight. This can be done on smartphone through the same 3.5mm audio cable. Micro SD card will expand the storage enough to keep several hundred albums at 128 bitrate compression, which is more than adequate quality to play through low-end speakers.
I don't think you need to worry about "outputs" on TV (if you buy TV). What you need is "inputs", and, even if it has HDMI and USB inputs, it also has - usually - VGA for video and RCA for sound. Yes, music from laptop via amplifier and ANY speakers will be better than through TV speakers. My old box of CRT TV with a single mono speaker had better sound than my new LCD Panasonic, because the acoustics of big box is better.
And, about 720p TV that are cheap "because nobody needs it anymore". As 23" monitors - probably so. Computer users are moving over to 1366x768, so 720p TV don't cut it. But a bigger 720p TV is perfectly fine if all you want is watching movies - you will hardly see the difference between 720p and 1080p on 32" screen from 10ft distance.
You don't have to play Moonlight Sonata from laptop if energy budget is really tight. This can be done on smartphone through the same 3.5mm audio cable. Micro SD card will expand the storage enough to keep several hundred albums at 128 bitrate compression, which is more than adequate quality to play through low-end speakers.
I don't think you need to worry about "outputs" on TV (if you buy TV). What you need is "inputs", and, even if it has HDMI and USB inputs, it also has - usually - VGA for video and RCA for sound. Yes, music from laptop via amplifier and ANY speakers will be better than through TV speakers. My old box of CRT TV with a single mono speaker had better sound than my new LCD Panasonic, because the acoustics of big box is better.
And, about 720p TV that are cheap "because nobody needs it anymore". As 23" monitors - probably so. Computer users are moving over to 1366x768, so 720p TV don't cut it. But a bigger 720p TV is perfectly fine if all you want is watching movies - you will hardly see the difference between 720p and 1080p on 32" screen from 10ft distance.
