Is This The Greenest Laptop Ever Made’?
getsolar.com
We’ve seen a slew of solar-powered chargers designed for use with personal electronics. Here’s but one example. But how about getting rid of all the plug-in peripherals and instead go with a laptop that runs entirely on solar power?
That seems to be the goal of Andrea Ponti, an Italy-based industrial designer.
His concept for the Luce Solar Panel Powered PC envisions a personal computer powered by two solar cells, one on theback of the monitor, another underneath a touch keyboard. As designed,the cordless laptop includes a battery and weighs about four pounds.
Granted, it’s not clear the laptop has been successfully tested.Laptops generally consume a fair bit of power relative to what smallsolar cells are capable of putting out, which means Ponti’s design maycome up against some energy-deficit limitations.
Fear not, TechCrunch’s Matylda Czarnecka has come up with a potential work around: “One solution could be to use an electronic ink display in place of the usual backlit flat panel.” No kidding. Amazon’s Kindle, which relies on ink display technology, is a true energy miser: it can go an entiremonth without needing a recharge.
The laptop’s limitations aside, Czarnecka is intrigued, saying the product “could become the greenest laptop ever made.”
It bears noting that Ponti is hardly the only person thinking aboutsolar-powered personal electronics. A while back, none other than Apple filed a patent application for “harnessing external light to illuminate a display screen.”
Solar Powered Computer Could Become ‘Greenest Laptop Ever Made’
