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by mrandish 75 days ago
> that's just when plugging in a USB 3 device into a USB 2 port

Dell XPS laptops (and some others) can also warn if the charger isn't providing the full wattage the laptop is rated for. This warning is an option that can be turned off in the BIOS settings.

I usually turn it off because I sometimes intentionally do day trips with a smaller/lighter portable charger which delivers 45w to my laptop which can need up to 65w due to having a discrete GPU. However, 45w is more than sufficient to charge the laptop during normal use on the Balanced power plan with iGPU. I only need more than 45w when gaming with the discrete GPU active.
2 comments
sokoloff 75 days ago
Just this morning, my old Latitude failed to boot with a “this charger is only giving 20W and that’s not enough to boot this laptop” error. (I was testing a new USB-C charger that’s obviously going back.)

Weirdest part was it was 100% charged, so could have booted with 0 Watts of charger but decided not to boot with 20 Watts more.

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mrandish 75 days ago
Oh, refusing to boot at all is evil. I've never seen that.

Sure, you or I would just unplug the charger and run on battery but bad UX decisions like that generate a support call to me from my 95 yr old mom. It should not only warn and continue to boot, it should use whatever power is on offer to reduce the rate of battery drain.

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Eisenstein 68 days ago
It's a chip inside the charger brick.

* https://imgur.com/gallery/spoof-original-dell-laptop-power-s...

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koyote 74 days ago
Interesting that it refused to boot.

If I have a lower wattage charger connected on booth it shows me that information but I can just press enter to continue. It's just a warning.

Maybe it's a bios setting?

Workaround is of course to boot without a charger connected and then connect it later :)

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mleo 74 days ago
My wife's work laptop gives this stupid warning anytime any USBC charger is plugged in, other than the Dell brick. So even a dock delivering 100w would get a complaint. The Dell brick offers non-standard charging at 140w, which can't get replaced by standards compliant, smaller chargers.
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