At the end of my cord...

So, I've had my AOA150 for a little over three years, and it shows. It's scarred, beaten, bruised, and mangled, but it still works as well as the first day I unboxed her. Except one thing...

See, a bit ago, my battery died. Which would be fine, so long as my charger worked properly. I plug in my AC cord, and if I don't hold my tongue just so, my screen flickers, telling me it's not getting constant power. My friend has a different model--one of the full-sized Acer laptops--and my power cable works perfectly in his. No wiggling, no fidgeting, no nothing. Just a steady stream of power. He bought a new power cable for his laptop recently, and on a whim, I tried it in mine. Full, steady power.

I'm very confused.

If it were my AC cord, it wouldn't charge his battery either.
If it were the internal power bits on my laptop, his new AC cord wouldn't charge my laptop.

Any ideas?

 

Check the output voltage and amperage on your cable vs his cable. Your AAO will require a certain amount of Volts and a Certain amount of Amperes to run and charge the battery.

This is just a guess, but supposin your AAO cable is knackered, it won't be outputting enough voltage to run and/or charge your AAO, hence the screen flicker. Your friends full size laptop probably has a better, charged battery, in which case the screen flicker wouldn't be evident, the battery would be taking up the slack, the AAO cable may have just enough amperage to run the machine. I'd say test your cable in your friends laptop without the battery plugged in, if I'm right, it probably won't run.

It's either that or have you checked the size of the adaptor plug (the one that attaches to your AAO). If your friends is slightly larger, or the hole for the pin inside is slightly shallower, it may be making better contact with a damaged adaptor inside your AAO. This would account for you having to hold it just right.

A fair while ago I had a similar issue with my D250, turns out the double-sided tape they use to adhere the adaptor to the inside of the netbook chassis wasn't up to scratch and as I was inserting my AC adaptor, it was pushing the internal adaptor out of the way causing a weak connection. I hot-glued the internal adaptor in place and haven't had a problem yet, judging by the amount of hot-glue I used, I probably won't have the problem ever again lols.