Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
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These days it’s hard to imagine taking a long drive without having a car charger on board to keep the battery in your cell phone topped off.
But what about your laptop?
While some modern laptops can be charged with a standard USB-type car charger and a compatible cable, there are plenty of others that can only be charged using the AC power brick that came with the laptop. [Read more…]
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A couple of weeks ago I made this short video and wrote this blog post explaining how (and why) I took my home office off-grid and went solar.
To quickly recap, I installed a simple 24VDC to 120VAC solar power generating system to power my computer, laser printer and other essential electronics to prevent my office gear from going offline during power outages.
Overall, I’m very pleased with the way it’s working out. [Read more…]
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Question from Carl: I bought this 300 watt 12VDC to 120VAC power inverter to run my coffee pot and a couple of other items while I’m camping.
While I was researching a related topic online I found a couple of articles that said not to plug an inverter larger than 200 watts into a car’s cigarette lighter because it’ll burn the inverter up.
That’s a problem because the inverter I bought only came with a cigarette lighter plug. You can’t remove it and there’s no place to plug in cables that can connect it directly to the battery.
What I need to know is will my 300W inverter really burn up if I plug it into my car’s cigarette lighter socket? [Read more…]