I'm really eager to hear some stories on the Outbacks. I have seen them and considered using them a couple of times.

The story, as I know it, is that Xantrex went around and bought out a bunch of inverter companies (GO!,Trace Heart etc.). When Trace got eaten up the previous owners of trace went out and started Magnum and the engineers left and started Outback. I think that is why you see a lot of innovation in the Outbacks. Magnum and Outback are new Names in the marketplace but I believe they got a lot of experience packed behind them.

I have been using Magnums ever since, and I love them so far, especially from an installation point of view. After years of hooking up Hearts and Traces I finally have an inverter with a decent size access to the AC connections. All of the old brands were nothing but a pain to hookup to and I often had to do all of the connections before I can even mount them.

I like the surge capabilities of the Outbacks but their overall size and their marginally higher cost always pushed me into the Magnums.

I find the idea of using them to supplement AC starts very interesting, but isn't there some concern about overloading these puppies. I mean if you have a gap in the process or a bit of lag, for any of Murphys reasons, you could end up with a locked rotor situation in the AC and that could fry your inverter and/or gennie before the fuses and breakers kick in and save the day, especially if you're running slo-blow DC fuses and delayed AC breakers. I have a really nice bookend that used to be inverter that can prove that can happen.