I'm on to power inverters now.......

To answer the question re power inverters , I had mine professionally hard wired into the 12v system and protected by a fuse. It has been a good decision!  It ensures all 240 v sockets can be used normally. It is important to remember that the condition of your battery/s is vital. A poor battery will not be able to store much Solar power and therefore, will not be able to give much power for very long. Particularly through an inverter as the inverter itself needs power to run. Solar Panels and Batteries go together like Horses and Carts- Keep both in first class condition. 

 It ensures all 240 v sockets can be used normally.

Is that wise, or did you get a very big inverter? We manage to occasionally trip out a 16A supply with our "normal" activities - even though they seem to actually go off at around 18 to 19 amperes.

That's why I have used dedicated "Inverter" sockets, which allows them to also be used on low EHU power sites at the same time as the mains ones.

Even if correctly sized the cheaper "modified sine-wave" inverters might not power a computer mains adapter. 

You might need a "pure sine-wave" as opposed to a "modified sine-wave" one to work; I have had over the years some computer adapters that do work with the modified type and others that do not.

if you could check your computer's adaptor by using somebody else's inverter it might help buy wisely.

There are many 12v laptop chargers available. They plug into a cig lighter socket and usually come with a number of adapters for the laptop plug end, you just have to set the voltage output to be the same as on the mains charger label.

Just put "12V laptop charger" into your search engine or look on ebay or Amazon. 

If you have a local Maplin electronics store they may be able to help.

Just wondering - has anyone used an inkjet printer off grid? They do seem to be low wattage - allegedly.

I may be drowning in a sea of leads and plugs here at Chez Rosie!

My Hewlet Packard F4580 works fine from my small inverter.

Are you setting up a mobile office now?

 Just tried it with the bigger inverter and it works it as well, except that this one has a fan which can be annoying.

Do you know I am beginning to think I am! Part of my downsizing was to simplify things and have a slimmed down system for my writing and photography. However I am getting bogged down in this new laptop with its "let's reinstall every app you uninstall" attitude (Windows 10 - grrr!). So am investigating Linux Mint OS. And now I've fallen in love with Drones

Sorry I am rambling away here............

Drones!  Hmmm.  Next thing you will be needing is a ladder.

Our ancient laptop simply sulked and stopped working around 4 years ago, when it couldn't cope with Windows XP updates, never mind 10! But here I am using it, unmodified physically, quite happy on Linux Ubuntu, where you get lots of very useful applications thrown in; it's faster than ever it was on Windows, and only very rarely freezes, when we ask it to do to many things at once. No need for anti-virus things either to slow it down. I'm truly not a computer geek, so if I can install it, any reasonably awake person can! And, I think like Mint, it's free. Never tried Mint - we were advised the Ubuntu was more practical and nearer to what a Windows user might expect, so went with that. I'll be interested to hear what you end up with.

Drones - is this the buzzy flying sort or the more musical bagpipe sort?   I've got some lovely ones of the latter sort on a reproduction set of 16th century pipes - deep, quiet, and very soothing! No electricity, EHU or otherwise, needed....