Noisy Laptops... :(

[boingoman]

Anyway, no, lifting the safety ground on a laptop probably isn't going to be a problem. It's poor practice, though, and a bad habit to get into.

I would try plugging the laptop into an outlet from somewhere else in the house first, for one. Because it's the amp that's noisy, after all, right? It's getting bothered by the laptop, none of your other stuff is.

 

[RocknRollOver]

First off, I apologize if I offended you Boingoman, that wasn't my intention.

Secondly, I apologize to the rest of the board because after reading my post again, it appears I inadvertently misslead you guy's with the whole "don't lick the motherboard" thing, if you do that, you'll get zapped ground or not. Boingoman is right, only a gfci or a circuit breaker with built in gfci (arc type) will possibly save you in that instance.

However, the addition of a separate ground wire was added for you safety and not the device and this is why.....
example:your stove gets a loose or bare wire and touches any metal part (chassis) of the stove, without a separate ground wire, that metal that it touches will become "hot" or "live" and thus if you touch it, you will complete the path to ground and well, it won't be pretty or smell good.
So the separate (note the emphasis on "separate") ground wire would send the "hot" or "live" wire straight to ground (effectively shorting out) in the above example and hopefully trip the breaker or blow the fuse long before you ever touched it.

Again, I apologize for being inaccurate and or without proper explaination, I don't wan't to see anyone get hurt.

To address the rest..........

Yup, the difference is that when you make your warranty claim, the guy who looks at it won't say "The safety ground was disconnected, sorry, no new stuff for you."

I disagree here, as there would be no feasable way for anyone to tell whether
or not you had a ground intact.

The safety ground is mostly there to prevent fires by tripping a breaker if there is a problem. You and your equipment maybe surviving are just bonuses. Only GFI outlets are really designed with human safety in mind.

I agree, just remember, preventing a fire is for your protection too.

Standard outlets take anywhere from 3-10X overcurrent to trip "instantly", which really means "under 100ms". That's 45-150 amps for up to 100ms.

Rule of thumb is twice the current, sustained (like Boingoman shows above), before the fuse blows or breaker trips.

Basically, if you take your blender in the tub with you, it will blow up, and you will die. That is considered unfortunate, but OK. Your house or apartment building burning is considered not OK.

LOL, unfortunately this is true, maybe with the advent of the new style breakers, we'll be able to prevent all of the above.

No, they aren't. The little green metal ring on the top is meant to be put under the screw in the middle of a standard polarized 2 prong outlet. That screw is, or should be, attached to ground..

Theoretically this is correct but in reality it's not likely you have an available seperate ground in a 2 wire/2 prong outlet, so the ground tab provided is useless in most cases.
Incidentally if you had a metal box that the outlet sat in and it was grounded , I personally would change the outlet to reflect today's standards (from 2 to 3 prong).

Those things are made so you can plug a 3 prong plug into a 2 prong outlet, and maintain the safety ground. Just so you know.

Adressed above, and the ground provided on those adaptors is mainly because of the current electrical codes pertaning to adaptive electrical devices. in most cases you won't be able to use it effectively (the ground tab).

Hope I cleared up some things, and I really didn't mean to lead anyone astray.

Now lets get back to makin music !!!