those I listed should be 1850 surge, 1500 running watts.

and my previous furnace would hit that surge @1850 and nearly kill this poor thing, but it always comes out of it in a few seconds as the furnace winds up. Haven't tried it with my newer furnace, sure it's less watts than the old monster was. I'll test tomorrow if not sooner, we keep getting power blips here now due to snow...

I doubt the 1000 watt inverter would take the 1850 watt hit and not shut down to run the furnace. I personally don't like the idea of having to run my vehicle all the time to power the inverter either. Nothing like having people take your car while it sits idle in the driveway burning fuel at 2mpg or whatever. The little generator ran for nearly 3 days straight a few years ago on a few gallons of gas. I can chain it down to the house or another object and not worry about it walking off while in use too.

Also, my house is on a Transfer Switch - plug in the generator, start it, flip some breakers on the transfer switch and fire up whichever device I need in the house. One circuit is Kitchen, One is Furnace, One is living room outlets. Warm the house up, switch to kitchen to keep the fridge cold, switch to living room if needed to watch or listen to news casts etc.

I have a small inverter, but it won't power much... think it's a 400 watt or so.