CYork

There's a similar question on the Italy board about charging an Ipod in Europe. My question is - do European cars have cigarette lighters like American cars do? I assume they do, but I'm wondering if they're the same sort of lighters? The reason I ask is we have a car adapter for our Ipod which charges the Ipod while you have it plugged into the car's lighter.
Just wondering if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing. Thanks!

J62

Every car I've rented in Europe (4x/yr) has had lighters, and yes, they were the same style as in US. In fact, I bought my IPOD car charger in Europe.

hamburger

I do not have an IPOD charger for my car and we will be in Europe for 3 weeks. Are there any IPOD docking stations in cafes where you can charge an IPOD, kind of like the cell phone charging stations they have here in the US? I guess the car option is the best and maybe I should just buy a a car adapter for our Ipod which charges the Ipod while you have it plugged into the car's lighter.

What about plugging the IPOD into a rental car's sound system so you can listen to your ipod's music through the car's existing sound systme -- do you know if that is a somewhat standard option?

Thanks.

Jennifer

Jennifer

Lexma90

I have a regular wall outlet charger that I plug into the wall in my hotel room (using a transformer). I use the wall charger during European and U.S. vacations.

ParisAmsterdam

hamburger,

My daughter has a charger that plugs into a wall socket for her iPod. It will do 110 or 240 volts so all it needs is a plug adapter for Europe.

Some cars no longer have "lighters" per se but it would be very unusual to find one without a 12 v power outlet which is essentially the same thing.

Your laptop or netbook, if you take one, will recharge your iPod.

Whether you can plug into a rental car sound system or not is impossible to say. Depends on the car. I'd hazard a guess that the more expensive the car, the more likely it might have a jack for an iPod.

Overall... since you'll have a car, maybe a combination charger/fm transmitter so it will play on the sound system would be best... I know Belkin makes them.

For a trip last year I burned 3 DVDs with tunes as I figured the rental car would have a DVD player. It played the MP3 format DVDs fine.

Rob

jent103

In Ireland a couple of years ago, our rental car had a power outlet (not a cigarette lighter). Worked fine with my Griffin iTrip Auto, which is a combination charger/FM transmitter. I don't think our car had an input jack, but the newer ones might. I wouldn't count on it, but it wouldn't hurt to bring a cord just in case.

Wall chargers are pretty inexpensive and completely worth it, in my opinion.

kelliebellie

Just bring back up methods. Car voltages are the same, but we had one rental car that it was very difficult to get to the plug. It was just designed for the little lighter and we couldn't get our bigger chargers in there. And I had another car with no cigarette lighter and I finally read in the book that the power outlet was "optional" which of course our rental car didn't have.

But we've always had back up methods of charging and one of them has always come through.

For playing the ipod in the car, we found it best just to bring little battery powered speakers. We could listen to it in the room then as well. Some cars now might have imput jacks (bring the cord), but don't count on it.

hamburger

Thanks everyone. So, I just boutht a FM TRANSMITTER CAR CHARGER FOR IPOD that works fine in my care here by plugging into the car's lighter. My question is, it has an on/off switch but the charger still charges even in the off position. If I leave this plugged into the lighter when the car is not running, could this run down the car battery -- kind of like when you leave the headlights on , it makes the car go dead?

jent103

I've accidentally left my iPod or phone charger plugged in overnight. I haven't had any problems with the battery - not to say that it couldn't happen, but that's my experience. However, if you mean leaving your iPod charging overnight or something similar, I'd be wary of leaving something valuable unattended in plain sight. You can buy a wall charger for $29 from Apple (and maybe cheaper from elsewhere).