One point that is worth remembering is that you can make it a lot easier for someone to help you by always facing out of the parking spot whenever possible (backing into it or drive through). That way your battery is much closer to the car from which you are getting the jump.

Also, if you are making your own cables and all you have is smaller guage wire (say, ten guage), you can double up the wires and gain three guage sizes per doubling. Two #10 wires = a #7 and four #10 wires = a #4 guage equivalent.

I agree, the little compressors do heat up quite a bit, I'll keep in mind the jacking tip - anything to speed things up :-)

Most WM stuff is junk for the long term but one thing that has lasted 3 years is my 500 amp EverStart Jumper from Wall Mart. I am chucking this up to a random anomaly in the space time continuum.

Cowboy walks into a fancy restaurant and is told he must wear a tie by the maitre'd. So he goes outside to his truck and gets some jumper cables, ties them around his neck and walks back in. Maitre'd ponders the cowboy for a moment and decides discretion is the better part of valor. "O.K. sir, i'll let you in, but don't you start anything!"

I've never used one myself, but I have come across an air compressor that has a cooling fan built in to keep the motor and compressor cool. Supposedly, it can run for 8 hours continuously. Truck Air HD-300
Unfortunately, no built in 12 volt jump start battery on this guy.