Emergency electrons

I’m not up for thinking about big, broad problems this week. No, sometimes, you’ve got to concentrate on the immediately solvable things. The little things.

So with CUC’s chronic blackouts in mind, I decided to provide an update to my March 2, 2007 column, “Computing in the dark.” Back then, I looked at a product made by Xentrex, called the XPower Pocket Inverter 100. You plug the inverter into your car’s cigarette lighter (or power port if it has one), and, presto-chango, it converts 12 volts DC (car voltage) into 120 volts AC (normal appliance voltage). Yep, just the thing for blackouts, when you absolutely, positively, need to get some work done on your notebook computer.

It’s a sleek, solid, well-designed thing, about the size of a small paperback book. It has worked well for over a year now, but, with a mere 80 watt (continuous rating) output, and just one AC socket, I’ve really wanted something with more power and another socket.

After all, if you’ve ever found yourself facing a pressing work deadline during a long blackout, or in other situations devoid of wall-power (e.g. camping), you’ll also find that the one critical piece of gear you need will be just the one that you can’t figure out how to power. Maybe your notebook computer’s battery is dead, but that’s just the start of things. You might need to use your scanner. Or your cell phone might need a charge. Or your digital camera battery might need a charge. Or that one, essential piece of data you need resides on an external hard drive that requires AC-power to work.

It’s enough to make you long for the halçyon days of manual typewriters, carbon paper, Polaroid cameras, and paper ledgers.

Anyway, I’m overflowing with electrons now, having bought a larger inverter, this one made by an outfit called Rhino. Their model RH150W carries a continuous rating of 150 watts, a peak rating of 300 watts, and has two AC sockets. It’s pretty big, about the size of two peanut butter sandwiches stacked atop each other.

In my wanderings, I found a box of these things for ridiculously cheap. Average prices are probably $30 or so.

In terms of power, 150 watts is a great place to be. That’s more than enough juice to run my notebook computer, plus a cell phone, or a camera battery charger, or stuff like that.

The Rhino has a serious industrial look, and its blue metal case is lined with metal cooling ribs. I noted that these ribs have sharp edges, which can probably slice your car’s upholstery if you’re not careful.

Anyway, with the aircon blasting, Rush playing at full volume, and all that AC juice at my disposal, I’m a lean, mean, computing machine and digital darkroom. If you ever need to amortize a mortgage, forecast cash flow, or edit your yearbook photo in the smoking ruins of a post- apocalyptic world, you know who to call.

Besides, with the way that oil prices and the economy are going, we’re all going to be living in our cars anyway, so we might as well get comfortable with that concept.

Yikes, that might be closer to the truth than I care to admit. I’ve known two guys who did just that. One lost his business and wound up living in a Chevrolet van. The other lost his mind and moved into a old school bus.

And then there’s the guy, William Least Heat-Moon, who made a name for himself by living in a van and driving around in it. His book, Blue Highways, is one of those wistful and folksy looks at Americana via the time-honored road trip, and it has been a hit for decades. I’ll bet if he did that gig today, he’d want an automobile inverter. You betcha’.

Meanwhile, you’ve surely noted the minor trend in print advertisements that feature the same, trite theme of a liberated yuppie merrily using a notebook computer on a tropical beach. Well, you won’t catch me taking a computer into the sand, but a car can get me mighty close to it.