Does the bulky 'inverter' draw more electricity from the car?
If I park the car and plug in a laptop for a little bit, could the car battery die?

 

I'm guessing yes. Since the inverter is stepping the voltage up to an AC house current, I think it would draw more than a simple DC to DC converter.

The iGo solution is a nice one for what you're tyring to do...

 

Yes it will, I wont even try to run anything off the Battery if the car is off... iDrive itself can drain the battery enough to make the car shut down and complain that you've been using too much power so it needs to turn itself off so u can start the car next time around.

 

Many of the bigger brands of laptop sell their own specific auto/air adapters. Run off 12 vdc and usually of the cigarette adapter style . Some are less bulky than others depending where conversion is accomplished. Have not been into laptops for awhile so have not kept current, but remember Dell, IBM, HP, Toshiba, Compaq (now part of HP), Gateway all had their own unique adapters. You could be confused by a Toshiba laptop as they usually did their conversion inside laptop so only a cord (no bulky transformer). Ac plug at one end a special two prong at other end. So it was 110 ac into the computer but it would also take 12vdc and automatically recognize what voltage came in. As already mentioned, CC, Best Buy, CompUSA, etc, usually have some "Universal" adapters. I think I still have some of that junk around but with no laptop any more it is relegated to the attic

 

Heres how big the car/air univeral one is, its very light too I want to say like about 2 ounces...






Its actually easier and more convienet to use this one than the one that came with the laptop... that one is MUCH bigger...