Use a 1500 Watt full sine wave inverter, with a 6 outlet power strip.
Expensive but always works, need extra battery, professional installation and expect overall installed cost to be 2000.00+

I am of the opine table top adjustments cause the least problems in the cat. adjustment biz. Do you mind disclosing the carrier?

Allstate will have roving QC's and on of their ride alongs alao  involves an on board equipment inspection. You will be gigged if you are not equipped to close on site.

With three large carriers expecting table top on 60-80% of all wind/hail and probably flood losses this will equate to more good closed losses that will require more good experienced adjusters and the less experienced will be relaged to an apprentice program as a ride along at whose expense. It will have to be the new persons expense as this will slow down all adjusters on the street. But, it will be good for the public and cut down on reopens and litigation, no doubt.

I have the set up in the ole Arkansas farm truck. I use a fan cooled, 400 watt, dual outlet inverter wired with heavy wire, probably 10 or 12 gauge, thru a fuse directly off the battery. I mounted the inverter on the tunnel and plugged in a short cord to one outlet. I run my laptop, camera battery charger and other gadgets off it. Works great. I don't run a printer, and I know that it will not run a laser, might run an ink jet.

It will run a car battery down if it is left on over night.

Thank you for the info on not running a laser. A lot of the adjusters I know are buying one because the ink cartage will last a long time.
I know that the State Farm issued portable HP ink jet works off one. I do not remember the inverter model but it plugged into the lighter and had two plug outlets and a cooling fan.

OK, 2 rd Question--air cards or wireless card or UBS Adapter- Which for the best price is best and any info on the cell phone with uplink ability from your lap top?

I was issued an Sprint UBS Adapter by S.F., so we could send in est. with photos from the field. The adapter work ok as long as you did not send more than 2 photos, then it cashed and locked up your lap top. I found it easier to find a motel and use their hub or go to the help room. The new rules require us to uplink from the site or find a motel real quick. So the adapter and the card or UBS or cell phone has now become very important to me.
Thank you all for your info and looking forward to reading more.
Yes, I was spoiled by the help rooms, as they keeping telling us in the class...forget yesterday, it is a new era do or go.

At one time I ran a laser off an inverter, 1000 watt, but lasers have to heat up, laser printers use a lot of electricity and heat up the vehicle. That was a while a go so maybe lasers run cooler and use less power now.

Reliability is what you want not a vehicle fire or a dead battery.

For reliability don't use the inverter that plugs into the cigarette lighter. The wiring in your vehicle is not heavy enough for continued use.

USB or PCMICA, doesn't matter, but you want to access a 3G network and if you are working in rural areas or where the phone towers are down a cell phone repeater helps. I have one in the motor home with a tower and one in the Arkansas farm truck with an outside antenna.

Posted By hill_david123 on 16 Jun 2009 07:29 PM
...I know that the State Farm issued portable HP ink jet works off one. I do not remember the inverter model but it plugged into the lighter and had two plug outlets and a cooling fan. 

We just bought an HP 470 portable inkjet and it is a great little printer. It's blue tooth and wireless, so it runs on battery when no ac or dc is available. Print is excellent. FEMA uses the 460 printer in the field. Janice used it in Iowa during her FEMA gig and loved it, so I ordered the newest one for her. I highly recommend this printer. It prints over 1,000 pages on a battery charge.

"I do have a second battery in the passenger floorboard which the inverter is connected directly to so it is not getting shut off & back on all day. Battery is connected parrallel (SIC) to the starting battery. It will cut out due to low voltage when starting after I sit & work for an extended time."

Just a word of caution, "Hydrogen-oxygen mixtures are explosive across a wide range of proportions. Its autoignition temperature, the temperature at which it ignites spontaneously in air, is 560 °C (1,040 °F)."

It is not best practice to have a charging lead acid battery in the passenger compartment of a vehicle.

Old Volkswagens had a lead acid battery under the back seat. The accumulation and ignition of Hydrogen, generated by a charging lead acid battery would occasionally blow the back seat into the front seat.

Lighting a "seegar" would do it.

Sorry I forgot to state the obvious

"Don't use a lead-acid"

Thanks safety officer

As a vendor, I have installed many pc based cash register systems in restaurants since 1986 and have always gotten by with 500 watts UPS at the most to power a pc, monitor, and a printer during a power failure. Now with the low power pc's and ink jet printers, I use 250 to 350 watts.  They will always keep a system running for a while during a power failure.  I use a 450 watt inverter in my truck hard wired to one of the two batteries (diesel truck) with 10/2 romex wire and an inline fuse at the battery.  I have a laptop running from the time I leave the hotel until I get back when adjusting, have a cell phone charger plugged in, and an HP4315 office jet printer/scanner on when I need it. Sometimes I am also charging camera and flashlight batteries.  You can get inverters in several sizes from Harbor Freight at a bargain price and can order online if there is not a store nearby.  I suspect that Tractor Supply also carries similar priced inverters.  I probably have $175 into my hardwired installation, but I did do it myself.  I can't imagine anyone paying more that $300 to $400 installed for a good setup, but I don't see the need for anything larger than 600 to 800 watts, and then only if you need to run other equipment such as a saw or small air compressor. 

I never turn off the inverter until I am done for the day.  With the low power consumption, it has never run down my batteries.  Even if I were driving a single battery vehicle, it should handle the job but I would probably would not leave anything but the laptop on for an extended period of time with the engine off just to be safe.  However, I do carry an automotive battery charger and 100' of extension cord just in case a battery goes bad and fails to start.

I also use a 300 watt plug in inverter in my van when I am driving it, but the power goes off when the engine is turned off, but the battery on my laptop is good for about 5 hours if I leave it on.  However, I won't load this one up like I do the one that is direct wired.  I have burned up a couple of small inverters and two or three cigarette lighter receptacles  over the years and blew far too many fuses due to the excess resistance.  The wires that run to a lighter and utility outlet don't use a heavy enough gauge wire to handle the long term load. Now with the 10 gauge direct wiring I have not blown a fuse and the inverter has never overheated.

 

I'm thinking of using a UPS power supply (gel-cell battery) that is powered by a 300 or 400 watt inverter inside a Ford F250 (that comes with 2 large 60 cranking amp batteries under the hood). The UPS will accumulate the storage while driving and does not have the hazard of a hydrogen producing lead/ acid.I would likely ONLY run the laptop while the truck is off, but would start the engine prior to printing. What are your opinions?

Before I got an inverter, I did use a UPS in the truck a few times, primarily for a long trip to run video player and tv for the kids in the back (before they started building those things in).  You don't need an inverter which increases the load on your alternator.  You can purchase 500 watt ( and probably smaller, but a 500w is cheap) that has a + and - lugs on the back of it for 12 volt input.  When 12 V is applied, it bypasses the converter portion of the UPS and works as an inverter.  I have seen a couple or more brands of these.  Minute Man in Carrollton Tx (Dallas suburb) used to make them in a 200 and 500 watt size. I used the 200 but burned it up by overloading the 110v output and too small gauge of wire to the 12v input.  I would wire it in the same as an inverter, using 10 or 12 gauge wire from the battery with an inline fuse.

I assume that all brands with this capability have a 12v circuit that charges the internal battery when there is no 120V input.  However, with 2 batteries in the truck, you have way more capacity than the little battery in the UPS will give you, so using an inverter instead of a UPS will take up much less space in the vehicle and is much lighter.

It might be worth noting, in case some don't know this, that the low cost battery back up units sold as a UPS are not a true UPS, instead bypass the battery (except for keeping it charged) and switch to battery within a few miliseconds of the loss of 120V input. The 120V input is going through a converter to get 12V then through an inverter to get back to 110-120V.  This is how it does its surge supression but is not as good as a true UPS that is always outputting 110V from the battery's 12V to the inverter.  This type has no delay when 120v is dropped, but normally come only in large units, probably 1000 Watts and larger, and used to cost several times the cheap ones.