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Hardware

Wind-Up Notebook Computers 82

Posted by Hemos from the excellent. dept.
wtpooh writes "Wired has an article about a company developing a wind-up power source for computers. Apple is reportedly interested. " The company is also talking about its use in things like sub-notebooks. Man, if they made this (solar panels will probably be included), and if I got Iridium, I could go outside and still post. Seriously though, for people working the field, and less developed nations, things like this could really help the spread of computers.
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Wind-Up Notebook Computers More

Wind-Up Notebook Computers

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  • Where's that?
  • If Intel keeps cranking up power consumption the way they have in the past, you'd need to be the Man of Steel to crank out enough power for a laptop based on the Mobile Pentium III. I suspect that such laptops will either a) have a battery life of 5 minutes, or b) require an extra wheeled cart for the battery, or c) require serious workouts in the gym in order to carry around :-).

    But seriously -- is anybody else as disturbed as me about so-called "laptops" that need ten-pound batteries to give more than 45 minutes of battery life, and that will scorch your lap (from the heat) if you are ever silly enough to set it there?

    I was seriously hoping Corel would come out with a Netwinder-based Linux laptop. 15 watts of power consumption. Could power that sucker off of a couple of AA batteries! Alas, does not appear to be in the cards...

    -- Eric
  • Linux already has perfectly good FP emulation libraries so that's not a problem.

    Some problems I see with StrongArm:
    1) PCMCIA support. PCMCIA support is built into most laptop chipsets, but there are no laptop chipsets aimed at the StrongArm.
    2) Chipset support, period. In today's world of high-density FPGA's that's not as big a deal as it used to be, especially with a chip like the StrongArm that has a very easy-to-handle bus spec, but it still represents a design hurdle (though obviously one that Corel succeeded at jumping through).
    3) Software. This is the biggy. There isn't a blessed thing for the StrongArm except whatever Corel had put out. Going with the PPC you can just load LinuxPPC on it and have it work, going with the StrongArm you're stuck with making your own distribution, basically.

    Lest we forget, there are also some other chips out there. There are some low-power-consumption MIPS chips, for example (the MIPS chips are often used in laser printers and such). The PPC has better power consumption than the Mobile Pentium II, and similar performance, but definitely does not sip like the StrongArm. Unfortunately the only laptop chipset for the PPC appears to be Apple's, which isn't available to mere mortals (I'd take their laptops if they'd sell'em to us without MacOS, but that does not seem to be in the cards).

    The wildcard is AMD. I've played with a couple of AMD-based laptops and they're better than the Intel on the power consumption front, but their floating point performance really sucks :-(. But if they can get the K6-3 and K7 shipping in quantity for a decent price, with a low-power laptop version, this might be acceptable.

    But for low power consumption, NOTHING beats the StrongArm!

    -- Eric
  • My sister in law has had a wind up radio for almost 3 years now. This technology isn't new, unless they boosted the power. Something like this probably wouldn't drive an x86 chip anyway. Probably only the PPC and StrongARM.
  • Posted by Akira410:

    Akira runs around the corner preparing to fire a rocket at his opponent. An alarm sounds:

    Akira: Wait! Gotta wind up my laptop!
    BadGuy: Hah, yeah right! Eat my rocket!
    *BLEH*

    Heheh =) Anyways
  • Posted by Akira410:

    Mine used to be powered by a gerbil ...
    *sighs sadly*

  • Gee, what a novel idea! ;>
  • Not as much as earlier in the week, but it was down to -12... Jeez. I'd rather stay in and hack too when it's like THAT...
  • Umm... That's a great David Bowie album... Beyond that... Umm... I dunno.
  • If your bike had a windshield like motorbikes and cars, a few mirror tricks could make the screen float in front of you without using technology currently beyond our capabilities.
  • The idea is that the crank gives you a power source when you can't get to an outlet and your batteries are low. That makes it very useful in educational markets, where they can't provide an outlet in every desk. Also, it'd be good for journalists out in the field, where ready power isn't always accessible. This thing actually could have a lot of uses.
  • See above. I love mine. Not worried at all about Y2K! :-)
  • I've heard about these wind-up generators before, and my first thought was that they'd be great for notebooks. I've been eagerly awaiting someone to make this move, and I can't wait to get my hands on one. Could you imagine using that with a wireless modem? You could be hiking in the hills with your Toshiba Satellite, and telecommute to work, or do whatever. Sure, you'd have to crank it a lot, but we all need to work out. Maybe someone will make a pedal-version, so you can crank it more easily? Just sit in the woods, occassionally winding up your external notebook powersource with your feet. Pretty cool stuff.
  • They don't need computers in Africa. They wouldn't know what to do with them. Probably they'd use them to crack a nut, or something.

    Not computers, radios. News and information are useful to everyone. A little technology over there may just help that continent to stabilize a bit, so that people can make their lives better.

  • Surely this can't be good for your wrists, eh? ;-)

  • This is old new. The technology has worked with eMates for about four years now - the Newton range are very good at dealing with crappy power supplies, and the ARM7 based versions especially use very little power. Tom (?) Baliss (the guy who invented the radios) and someone from Apple knocked up the prototype at a conference when they first met.

    Since then the main obstacle has been storing more power in the spring. It looks like they have not met with much success and are looking for more venture capital. I reckon we might one day see palmtops powered like this (and I would use one), but I doubt they'll ever hold enough power to power a laptop.

  • Oh, yes. Technology leads to stability: why, the 20th century is just FULL of examples! Why, the US is just a whole lot of people getting along nicely because they have TV and radio!

    In fact, the fascist movements of the early 20th century were largely made possible by radio broadcast, and the Rwandan massacres were coordinated by radio, with on-air demagogues exhorting Hutus to rise up against Tutsis.
  • I like that idea. It's like those watches that get charged just by your movement. I mean, you can power it without doing much extra work.
  • What about using some sort of piezo (sp?) electronics device to generate the power? I think that is what they use for those self powering watches, and K2 makes a ski that has a circuit in it... (bunch of marketing hype) It supposedly uses the circuit to transform vibration into electrical energy which lights a little LED on the ski.. supposed to help with vibration damping.. but the circuit is really small... I'ld buy a self powering liberetto that you never had to plug in! :)

  • Iridium is voice system. Its limited to a 2400 connection. Pushing data over that network has got to hurt.
  • ... the P1 has been promised to run a *full* (read it, *full*) version of Mac OS, which would be 8.6 by that time (unless plans are changed). Sure, G3s are low power consumption compared to the Pentium chips, but who are we *kidding*? 2lbs or so of the Powerbook G3's 7lbs is batteries. Huge batteries. Heavy batteries that take hours to charge. The eMate's 4x2x.5 NiMH battery takes an average of 1 hour, 15 minutes (I own one). It weighs very little. Sure, you can crank that baby---on 1 hour of charging, you get up to 40 hours of work time w/o backlight. That's feasible, sure.

    But on a regular G3 laptop? Get outta here!
    Amy
  • Here's the CNN article from 4/6/97, [cnn.com] describing the technology, and here's the direct link to the .mov [cnn.com] that shows the eMate being powered by it.
  • A buddy of mine spent 3 months in Fiji about six years ago - he took his laptop and solar panels. Didn't have good comms, but that's not really what this article is about.

    It's nice that someone is finally packaging the technology - certainly packaging and marketing are more than half the battle - but hyping it as something revolutionary is a bit over the top, no?
  • or am I just having really wicked deja-vu... I have been up doing work all night, but I don't *think* I've gone so much crazier...

  • I often wonder about that sort of thing... is it really help, or continued imperialism? Very fuzzy distinction. Sometimes I think that study abroad programs are good, other times I wonder if it only strengthens western influence....
  • Looking at the road is no problem with retinal projection using 3 low power laser beams (RGB).
    The image will simply be superimposed on the field of view =)
    ---
    Ilmari
    Remove the capital letters from the e-mail-address
  • ...probably because, they demoed the e-Mate version (article mentions it) just over a year ago.
  • like the topic says.

    it's a great idea - the newton and emate have really low power requirements, and the new C1 portable that apple is working on is (i guess) gonna be real similar to the emate in structure, with even simpler and cooler motherboard components.

    it'll never work on intel equipment, but man...what i wouldn't give for a g3 with a crank.

    vector
  • and it works just like any normal radio. Except you have to wind it up first. You crank it 60 times to wind up the spring, and it's good for about an hour. I'd imagine that a laptop with CPU/hard drive/LCD screen would take a more powerful spring, but it should be do-able.

    How hard could it be? All you have to do is move some electrons around.
  • The obligatory next step would be methane powered. Eat that chili!!!

    -- Rob
  • i recall listening to a Baygen interview and he was talking about using the generator in alternate ways of converting potential energy to kinetic energy: instead of a windup spring, a person could lift buckets of sand high overhead (like from trees). then over the course of the next several days, the rope holding the bucket unwinds powering the Baygen generator
  • That is a _really_ cool idea, but it seems like it would set back the laptop's "miniaturization" process quite a bit. I'm not a ME, but I'd still have to think that adding that sort of mechanism --and making it effective-- to a laptop would really bulk it up.


    ---

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Beef ( 19842 )
    I already wind up my notebook. I open up the shell, and in the floppy drive there's this wheel thing, and I spin it round and round and round.

    The flight attendent said I'm no longer allowed to leave my seat.

  • They don't need computers in Africa. They wouldn't know what to do with them. Probably they'd use them to crack a nut [theonion.com], or something.

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Beef ( 19842 )
    Can I get that with bacon?
  • Socity has become so lazy and is getting more lazy as the days go on... I don't think this would catch on to well. Why crank it, when you can just plug it in.. That's the philosphy no adays.. But I wouldn't mind.. I think it would be good exercise!!
  • Yeah, anyway, I'm sure the amount of cranking one would have to do is negligible, considering the benefit of it.

  • If memory serves, during an interview with BBC's 'Tomorrow's World', Trevor Bayliss (inventor of the clockwork radio) declared an intent to produce a clockwork computer. Trevor had a huge struggle before anyone took his radio seriously. He didn't get recognition until Tomorrow's World broadcast the story. Now, his radio is manufactured in South Africa, by the South Africans, (primarily) for the South Africans.

    FWIW, I don't think that he had the Pentium chip in mind for his proposed computer. After all, the Psion PDAs can go weeks or months on just one set of alkalines. Is it unreasonable to expect a clockwork computer to run for an hour or two on a single wind?

    Trevor already has the technology to power such a machine. To my mind, all that remains is to obtain the funding

    //shady

  • Why not make a little pad you could sit on that would power your computer by heat and/or piezo electric crystals that would get power just from shifting your weight.

    Or how about a little foot pedal you pump? That could be pretty compact.
  • Just to point out that the wind-up radio was invented by Trevor Bayliss. He lives on Eel Pie Island in Twickenham (south west London, and about half a mile from where I live!).

    I have read discussion of various wind-up equipment some time ago in a Yachting magazine. A boat is a good example of a place where one does not want to be reliant on batteries for electrical power. A wind-up emergency radio is a Very Good Idea. Also, being able to wind up the computer used for navigation is good.

    As to power, perhaps laptop vendors need to think again about cramming vast power into laptops. Current batteries would run a typical laptop from 5 years ago for ages.
  • Well, you *could* use Iridium if it actually worked...

    Web surfing at 2400bps ain't much fun.
  • You dont need an iridium phone to be online almost everywhere in the world. My D2-cellular is
    reachable in over 110 countries. They just need to have a compatible GSM-Network. Unfortunately the US decided to use other frequencies for their cellular system than almost every other country worldwide...
    So I think Iridium will die quite fast... and what I read about sold iridium phones (ca. 3000 instead of over 10000 planned) makes me quite sure of this...
    Geez, even more trash in Orbit...

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