Thread: Laptop on with car off?

I think you're making it too complicated... unless your battery is no good, then the laptop should be able to run for a couple hours on it's own battery. when you park, just leave the computer on, and you'll be able to transfer everything you want. when the battery gets low , the laptop will shut itself down.

NOTE: make sure you have the laptop power supply wired with a relay, so it doesn't get power from the car when the engine is off (otherwise you'll kill your car battery).

...or you could use a USB stick to transfer files instead of transferring over the network

I have the wifi thing too, and i prefer the usb stick, its faster for me.

Another suggestion would be to set the laptop settings to power down after a specific time while it is on battery. Under the power settings in Control pannel (assuming the laptop is running XP) you should be able to set the laptop to turn off after 30 or so minutes of the laptop being on battery power. This should give you aenough time to transfer items.