Rally 7471 Portable Hand Generator

People are going to think I'm starting a sales blog or something if I keep posting stuff like this, but I thought this was really a neat little item. This is a generator made by Rally. Its internal battery can be charged up by plugging it into a wall outlet, or it actually has a hand crank on it which will charge it too. Why you can't find other hand crank generators for sale is beyond me because the technology is very old for doing this. They had hand crank generators in use during WWII. The unit has a 140 Watt power inverter and a regular 110 plug outlet, so you can power virtually any 110 appliance with it. It also has a USB port for charging things like cell-phones or camcorder batteries.

And it has a built-in air compressor for inflating flat tires or rubber rafts, a 12 volt outlet and jumper cables for jump starting your car, and an LED flashlight (LEDs are easy on power). This would of course be a Godsend on camping trips among other things. It takes three minutes of pulling the handle to charge the battery enough to jumpstart a car. It will run a typical laptop for an hour and a half on a full charge. (I imagine you'd probably have to crank it all day for that though). What more could you ask for? Let's hope the battery is replaceable (unlike most electric generators). It cost a hundred bucks. I haven't seen it for sale in stores, so you'll probably have to order it from Amazon etc.