The Ultimate Mobile Mac User's Survival Guide
MACBOOK POWER, ACTIVATE
Despite advancements in laptop battery technology, most truly mobile MacBook users’ worst nightmare is getting caught with a dead battery and no AC outlet in sight. Here are a half-dozen power accessories that help you keep your ’Book juiced up--in some cases even when there is no wall outlet nearby.
The Apple Juicz helps you stay off the grid without leaving modern technology behind.
Here Comes the Sun. Portable solar panels! They make it possible to take your MacBook off the grid and into the wild--as long as there’s a little bit of sunshine to draw on. Mactale readers are probably tired of hearing us gush about the QuickerTek Apple Juicz ($599 and up; 4 out of 5 stars), but its alt-energy powers are such that despite its high price, we simply can’t help ourselves. Another solar option for charging a laptop is the Voltaic Systems Generator ($499), a shoulder bag with a built-in solar panel that’s powerful enough to charge a laptop. The 15-watt Generator juices up in about 5 hours and can offer the power needed to top off your ’Book’s battery.
Power your laptop from the car’s power port using the Kensington Ultra Portable Power Inverter 150.
Power on the Move. Another mobile power option is a charger that plugs into a vehicle’s cigarette lighter and charges your laptop by drawing power from the car’s battery. This requires a device such as the Kensington Ultra Portable Power Inverter 150 ($69.99), which works in a car’s cigarette lighter or airline Empower port to provide AC power to mobile devices that need up to 120 watts of continuous current. Its compact design makes it easy to toss into the car’s glove box or a side pocket of your laptop bag or backpack.
Satisfy your MacBook’s appetite for surge-protected power with the PowerSquid Surge3000 Calamari Edition.
Strength in Numbers. Another hassle we’ve all encountered with our MacBooks on the go--in airport waiting areas, hotel rooms, and cafés--is a shortage of power outlets. That’s why outlet multipliers are worthy travel companions. The PowerSquid Surge3000 Calamari Edition ($69.95) is an outlet multiplier and surge protector that’s designed for flexibility, whether you pack it in your suitcase or leave it plugged into the wall in your home office. We especially like the way its flat-profile plug swivels full circle to fit in with anything else plugged into an outlet. Meanwhile, Belkin’s Mini Surge Protector ($24.99) offers surge protection in a compact form factor, expanding one outlet into three and featuring two powered USB ports for charging your iPhone, iPod, or other USB-powered device.
The Outlet Multiplier turns one outlet into five and comes in MacBook silver.
If you don’t need surge protection, save some cash and look to the PowerSquid Outlet Multiplier ($17.95), which turns a single power outlet into five, for less than 20 bucks.
PACK YOUR DATA TOO
Your MacBook’s hard drive isn’t the only place your data can live. It’s the obvious place, of course, but there’s a range of options when it comes to road-worthy external drives--both the magnetic spinning variety and flash drives. Here are our top picks.
Supplement your MacBook’s storage capacity with an external drive--magnetic drives for larger capacity and speedier performance and flash drives for pocket-sized storage. From top to bottom: Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac, SanDisk Cruzer Contour, Western Digital My Passport Elite, and OCZ Rally2.
Drive Time. In our Feb/09 issue, we brought you a comprehensive roundup of external drives (“You Can Take It with You,” p38), each of which we tested to measure its read and write times as compared to the other drives in our roundup. Our top-rated magnetic drives in that roundup were the 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac ($189.99), the 500GB Western Digital My Passport Elite ($169.99), and the 320GB OWC Mercury-on-the-Go ($147.99). We loved the form factor of LaCie’s 120GB Little Disk ($159.99), but its performance wasn’t quite up to snuff.
Where portability’s concerned, flash drives are perhaps the most conducive to traveling light, but you’re more limited when it comes to capacity, and the performance of all flash drives is going to look pretty weak compared to that of magnetic drives. Our top picks for 16GB flash drives are the OCZ Rally2 ($53.99) and the SanDisk Cruzer Contour ($108.99).
A SAFE ZONE FOR YOUR iPHONE
If you think life on the road is easy, just take a close look at the next trucker you see filling up next to you at a gas station. To keep your iPhone from getting beaten down by the bumps and potholes you’ll inevitably run into along the way, consider these super-protective cases.
Crystal-clear polycarbonate plastic keeps your iPhone visible and usable in Mophie’s Hard Case Plus.
Armor for your iPhone. Even though the iPhone 3G’s purchase price was offset by the subsidy from AT&T--or whatever carrier Apple teamed up with in your home country--that’s no reason to leave it exposed to the dangers of life in the fast lane. These four rugged cases shield your iPhone from the wear and tear of a mobile existence. We all need more clarity in our lives--and that’s what the Mophie Hard Case Plus ($29.95) brings to the party: Its clear outer shell protects your iPhone from scratches and nicks, while a thin flexible clear panel covers the touchscreen, keeping it safe from sharp-edged keys, loose change, and other bits and pieces that invariably end up at the bottom of a briefcase or purse on a long business trip.
Go ahead, let the rugrats play with your iPhone. If it’s protected by the OtterBox iPhone 3G Defender, it’s probably safe from anything they can dish out--except a dunk in the toilet.
If your travels take you into truly rugged terrain, test-pummel the Speck ToughSkin for iPhone 3G ($34.95) and the OtterBox iPhone 3G Defender ($49.95). We tested both cases recently by putting our iPhone 3G in each one and handing it to an 18-month-old, who in the course of jabbing at the touchscreen managed to text-message a few people in our contact list gibberish messages that--we learned later--the recipients perceived as vaguely insulting. Um, sorry about that.
We don’t know why, but it gives us a thrill just to say words like polycarb, silicone, and grippy out loud. You get all three with the DLO HybridShell for iPhone 3G.
Finally, DLO’s HybridShell for iPhone 3G ($24.99) gets props for its ultramodern hipsterism while still keeping your phone protected from dings.