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As some of you know, I am in China. One of my roommates (it is a group trip from school) agreed to bring the converter. She did, but it happened to be ungrounded. Now I really needed to charge my laptop (with a grounding pin), so I plugged that in, leaving it ungrounded. I do not mind the computer shocking me, as actually I think feels good, I've plugged a desktop computer into an ungrounded outlet before, and it functioned just fine (apart from giving extremely strong shocks), but how would a laptop react to it? I kinda "arc tested" it and an EXTREMELY tiny blue spark had leaped. It's 2:08AM now and I have to get up at 6:30, so I'm just going to charge it today and check the forums tomorrow (and as long as I have access to the Internet, as far as I know, up till I leave Beijing.)
Registered Member #1403
Joined: Tue Mar 18 2008, 06:05PM
Location: Denmark, Odense C
Posts: 1968
I doubt you can draw any sparks from a laptop related to the power supply being ungrounded.
The SMPS is galvanic separating the input side from the output side that feeds your laptop, not like in a stationary computer where the metal enclosure is grounded to mains earth.
First thing to do with Danish power cords on laptop charges, break off the earth pin so make it adaptable to European plugs ;)
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
In general something like a laptop should be just fine running ungrounded (in fact I bet if you look hard enough you can find a charger for your laptop with an ungrounded plug available for sale), you really should not be able to feel any noticeable current running from it if the wiring in the house is right and supply was not designed by an idiot, although I have had a few supplies that give a pretty good zing when plugged into things like outlets which were wired backward (quite common here in the college town of goleta). If it bothers you you can manually ground it to something like a water pipe in the house, just clip an alligator clip to some metal part and run a wire to a water pipe.
The need for a ground comes mostly for instruments which have a metal case which which may end up electrically connected to the line, like power drills or whatnot. In a laptop or computer power supply the supply is required to be designed to be isolating, and it is generally pretty well protected from things like water slashing into it, so the ground is usually just used for EMI compliance. Almost every laptop style charger bring that I have taken apart has the ground just going to the center of a noise filter in the input, if it has one at all.
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Ungrounded outlets
