My power suddenly went out recently and it drove me crazy. The Crackberry was low on juice, couldn’t watch TV, was tired of reading by flashlight, and I knew I only had a limited amount of time left on laptop. Made me wonder what I would do if it went for a lengthier period of time.
For starters, here’s a good article from the Washington Post with a variety of helpful ideas.
Search Amazon (or any electronics store) for a Vehicle Power Inverter. What the unit does is convert your car’s DC power to AC power so you can run a laptop, DVD player, cell phone, and so on from your car battery. A small unit will give you about 69 watts of power. Depending on the size of the inverter that you buy, you can power a number of appliances in your house with one inverter. They seem to range anywhere in price from around $25 up into the hundreds of dollars depending on the size you need.
You could also try a Portable Power Pack which, if you keep it charged for just such emergencies, it can be used to recharge your laptop or cellphone. Apparently some of these devices are limited in the amount of times that you can recharge them, and also come in a wide variety of prices and size, depending on what you need to recharge. For instance, Energizer has a pack that will charge a total of 500 times and can charge a laptop, cellphone and iPod all at the same time for about $150. Now we’re talkin’!
And finally free Wifi which, thankfully, Starbucks has finally acquiesced (like the rest of the free world) and let its customers have access for free of charge. And no password either which is nice, so you don’t have to pester the clerks. AND there are apps available for your smart phone that will let you know where you can find free Wifi in a pinch.
