Finding a first gen Surface Pro charger

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StoleMyOwnCar

2[H]4U
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Sep 30, 2013
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Does anyone know of somewhere that is selling Surface Pro chargers for first gen? I see a lot of RT sales, but they don't provide nearly the same amount of juice as the SP edition.

There's hacked together unofficial stuff like this, but I don't know how it works:
AC12V45 - 32 TIP - Surface Pro - Microsoft - Notebook Adapter - Batteries and Battery Chargers - Laptop Batteries, Digital Camera Batteries, Camcorder Batteries, Rechargeable Batteries, Notebook Adapter, Li-ion Batteries, Smart Phone Batteries at Battdepot USA

Should I maybe just call Microsoft up and explain the situation?

I'm kind of surprised the first gen Surface Pro charger hasn't been recalled. I mean the entire charger, not just the stupid AC cord. Mine started smoking around the part that connects to the actual tablet. Unfortunately I haven't really been using it for months. What I did was strip the wire around the charger and whatnot and then separate everything out with tape. That worked for a while, but I realized I'd need to solder to get everything to really stay together. Frankly, I don't have a soldering iron, and I've come to the conclusion that asking someone to do it for me might end up costing more than a new charger.

I might be able to grab one of those unofficial chargers and then just cut off the connector section and frankenstein it together with my charger's cable with tape. That would hold together, but it's kind of a risky experiment at the 20$ entrance fee for some playing around.
 
I used an RT charger with mine at work when I had the SP1, it's not that much slower at charging the tablet than the Pro charger. I'd take an RT charger over a hacked up one any day. I don't want a $10 power brick wrecking my $1000 computer.
 
Hmmm... I found this on Amazon randomly (never saw it before), I'm just going to go ahead and give it a shot.
Amazon.com: Dragon 48W 12V 3.6A Power Adapter Charger For Microsoft Surface Pro 1 Pro 2 and 10.1 Windows 8 Tablet PC with USB charging Port: Computers & Accessories
The thing is, there aren't even really that many RT chargers left out there, and I can't tell if the ones that are left are legit in the first place.

It's pretty high rated and appears to be better than the original. I don't know if those verified purchasers with 5 star ratings are fake somehow, but... whatever. The Surface Pro actually only costed me about 500$ originally and it's years old at this point. I'd say the most likely scenario is that the adapter just doesn't work. Absolute worst case scenario, I'll just replace this tablet if something goes wrong.
 
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Yeah if you read the reviews, some people are still getting non-legit chargers. From what I can tell, my problem where the connector that goes into the SP starts short circuiting or just otherwise crumbling does not appear to be an uncommon problem. If I get the official charger, it's just going to happen again... the unofficial one I bought has reviews that mention they reinforced that specific part so that it would not break like that. I'm willing to take the risk, as I think a charger that will maybe not eventually inevitably start malfunctioning might be safer than the official article... which will malfunction. The official charger just sucks. Well no, the adapter itself is pretty good. It's just that Microsoft can't do the rest of the wiring worth a flip. They had to recall the power cord, and I'm really surprised the rest of it hasn't been recalled as well. Their wiring is trash.

I've seen cases where unofficial products are better than the official ones. Hopefully this is the case here.
 
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