Thinkpads Forum

Quick question for thoes of you who travel or live overseas. I will be spending a year in Germany with my new T61p (3 days and I am in love already!) and was wondering where to get a diffrent cord for the power brick or where I could find a spare cord and a European plug?

Any comments would be appreciated.

Actually you only need a US-EU adapter which costs about 3€ in almost any local supermarket.

If you change the cord, you'll have to change the power brick as well (2 pins vs 3 pins).

Hope it helps!

Cheers,
Tony

Thanks, I was hoping for something slightly more elegant. Perhaps I will have some fun with a soldering iron when I get there

Having travelled there, there is nothing inelegant about the adapter. I have them for England and Western Europe (along with Telephone adapters). They work well and leave your TP and power brick in original condition. The mains there are 220V and I certainly would not muck about with do-t-yourself plugs (for most people). ... JDH

You only need a plug adapter for Europe. They may be easier/cheaper to get once you are in Europe. They can be hard to find in the states.

Thanks for the link msb0b.

go to any radio shack - they have em.

Your power adapter (the brick) is rated 100-240V/50-60Hz so there's no need to start changing cords or this or that. It's rated to be used anywhere in the world. Just need the plug adapter from a 2-prong flat (NA) to 2-prong round (Euro).

icantux wrote:go to any radio shack - they have em.

Your power adapter (the brick) is rated 100-240V/50-60Hz so there's no need to start changing cords or this or that. It's rated to be used anywhere in the world. Just need the plug adapter from a 2-prong flat (NA) to 2-prong round (Euro).

Or you can get the replacement cord (2-pin) which costs even cheaper than an adapter (~1 euro). You simply would plug in that cord into Lenovo brick. Adapter is still better since it takes less space

- seems that they are cheapest off eBay, check e.g. this one or this one or all the many others here.

Hey, what about the ground connection is that also transferred through these cheapo's?? Might be important if you hook up against printers and other peripheral stuff?

Johan

Johan wrote:<snip>
Hey, what about the ground connection is that also transferred through these cheapo's?? Might be important if you hook up against printers and other peripheral stuff?

Johan

Many of the European plugs are two pin, and the adpater is just fine. In the case of the very large English adapter, you can just ignore the ground. Two wire AC IBM or Lenovo adapters are designed to plug in either way into anything up to about 250 Volts. So the power bricks are quite safe in an electrical adapter.
... JDH

TMac wrote:I will be spending a year in Germany with my new T61p (3 days and I am in love already!) and was wondering where to get a diffrent cord for the power brick or where I could find a spare cord and a European plug?

If you are going to be there for a year, get a local power cord rather than use a plug adapter with a US power cord.

In my expereince with travelling, there are many non-obvious things which you only discover when you are actually "in country" for a while, and the actual placement of power sockets in all possible circumstances (for instance in a hotel room, or in a conference/meeting room etc) will probably mean that there will be some instances in which a plug adapter just many not be able to fit into a socket, whereas a local plug will.

You should have no problem in finding a local power cord, in local electronics stores, for either the two pin or three pin version of the various ThinkPad power bricks.

Your US power cord plus plug adpater will probably get you started OK, so you will have time to find local power cord when you reach Germany.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Thanks for all your advice. I think I probably will take both sets of advice buy a plug adapter and either modify another 2pin cord or purchase one in Germany.

Thanks again.