window defrosting methods?

[lunarhighway]

with temperatures dropping and a car that's parked outside all the time frosted or foged up windows are quite a problem for me.

one of the first tips people often give is to drive of slowely in stread of letting the car idle, but with zero visibility trough the front window that can be quite suicidal... the car's 20 years old and there's no airco. the vents that are supposed to defrost the window don't work very well, but that's largely due to the fact the air only gets warm when the engine does so untill than they just make a lot of noise.

i'm wondering if anyone has had similar problems and has a clever solution. i'm considdering building a directable nozle accross the vents useing some electrical tubeing... i've got two diameters of tube where one fits inside the other so that i could rotate them to cover the whole windshield. this would also allow for a smaller opening wich might give the air a bit more force. but it would still be cold air.

i've also thought of converting a hairdryer to generate warm air electricly but the 230V AC to 12V DC conversion might be difficult, it would be handy to have an electric heater for a while though and might be more efficient, because useing the engine just to heat air can't be very efficient.

any thoughts on this? how do new cars handle this?...airco i guess?

it's not nice to sit in a freezing car for 15 minutes when you could be halfway home in that time.