Powering Your Electronic Equipment: Making Sure you’ve got the Juice on the Road

By now it's almost a cliché: TV shows and movies routinely show people talking on their cell phones, checking their Pads, and typing away on laptops in airplanes, coffee shops, and college classes; and indeed, electronic devices are proliferating, expanding our ability to communicate, access the Internet, and perform work almost anywhere, any time.

One thing the various media shows don't reveal is the power required to run those electronic devices, and what happens when the power runs out.

Laptops, Pads, digital cameras and camcorders, cell phones, and all the other electronic devices popping up on the market consume electricity ravenously and need to be constantly fed. Essentially, the owner has two options: an adaptor which allows the device to be plugged into a stable electricity source (like your home AC wall outlet) and a rechargeable battery and battery charger. If you know you're going to have access to an AC supply, all you need is an adaptor which lets you plug your device into the wall outlet. The adaptor routinely includes a transformer which brings the voltage of the electricity down from the 110 -120 volts down to the level of your device - otherwise, you'd fry the electronics in your device in short order. If you travel outside the country, you need to find a "universal adaptor" for your devices, which will adapt your equipment to the electrical outlets in the countries you're visiting.

If you need to work in an environment where you can't plug into a wall outlet, you need a battery to run the device. In this instance, usage time is the paramount consideration. Even this has two components: power storage time when the device is not being used and when it is used. The power gets depleted much faster with usage, but even an unused device will run out of juice over time. Check the battery's manufacturer's stats for their estimate of usage time; and if you're going on a trip where you have to depend on the device for an extended period of time between recharging, test this time estimate yourself before you take off into the wilds.

Wherever you go, you will eventually have to recharge your devices' batteries. A universal adaptor works for conventional situations like a hotel where you can plug into their outlets, but what if you're in the Australian bush, or the jungles of Vietnam? Check for recharging units which run off of car batteries (some plug into a cigarette lighter and charge your batteries as the car runs); new on the market are a variety of solar battery charges for electronic devices.

There's always the option of carrying multiple batteries and even chargers, if you want; but be careful that you can conveniently carry everything you think you need. It's a tradeoff between optimum power and baggage weight; so plan out your equipment and power needs and then pack the equipment up and try to think of how it would feel to carry it around for hours, days, or even weeks. You want enough power to run all your necessary electronic devices, but you don't want to end up feeling like a pack mule.