August 18th, 2009
Camping with your Mac 2.0 (HyperMac mini review)
In June I wrote about some essential gear to bring while camping with your Mac. This is a follow-up based on a camping trip I took with my family this month to Olympic National Park in Washington.
I thought I’d share couple of tips from a recent camping trip where I learned a few things about camping with a Mac. First, some definitions are in order. By camping I mean “car camping,” or driving to campsite and pitching a tent near the car. I don’t recommend bringing a MacBook Pro hiking or camping anywhere where weight is an issue — that’s what iPhones are for.
That being said, if you plan to bring a MacBook and/or iPhone with you on vacation/camping/whatever, there are a few power-related essentials that I highly recommend.
A good battery
In camping 1.0 I suggested bringing “batteries galore” so that I could power my MacBook Pro for more than two nights. A better solution is to, a) upgrade to one of the new long-life, fixed battery MacBook Pros, and b) get an external battery HyperMac. I picked up the largest mac-daddy 222-Watt-hour model ($499, below) which provides enough juice to use a MacBook Pro for 28 continuous hours - not that anyone should do that or anything. The HyperMac battery comes with a genuine MagSafe cable (not pictured) that plugs into the port on the battery to the right of the USB cable.
The 222Wh model is massive (especially when compared to MacBook Air’s 37Wh battery) and a tad heavy, but Luckily HyperMac offers three smaller models. They also offer 60Wh ($199), 100Wh ($299) and 150Wh ($399) models.
In addition to the included MagSafe charger (not pictured), the HyperMac battery includes a 5V/1A USB power port so you can charge any USB device (like an iPhone) individually or simultaneously with a MacBook/MBP. The 222Wh model can charge an iPhone up to 52 times on a full charge.
Chargers galore
If you’re a two-iPhone family it’s imperative that you bring reliable USB chargers with you on the road. You probably already have a 12-volt car charger for your iPhone and a USB wall charger at home, which is fine, but for travel I recommend that you pick up a pair of dual-USB chargers.
The first is a dual-USB wall charger like the PowerBlock Dual Universal ($25, right) from Griffin Technology. It allows you to easily charge two iPhones (or anything that charges from USB) from a standard household wall outlet. I bring one of these with me with two dock cables for charging our iPhones at night.
Without a wall charger like the PowerBlock I’d have to charge our iPhones from my MacBook Pro. Not only is this a cabling nightmare (especially when you have kids) the MacBook has to be awake to charge USB devices. Even if you dim the screen and the keyboard backlight the light generated from the pulsing sleep LED is enough to keep me awake at night.
My other must-have charger is a dual USB 12-volt charger for the car. When you’re doing a lot of driving you should be charging both iPhones any time you’re in the car. My charger of choice in this category is the dual-USB 12-volt adapter that came with my iPhone battery from RichardSolo.com. Similar models are available from Scosche ($5 @ Walmart) or Griffin Technology ($15).
What are your must-have Apple chargers while on the road?
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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