Thought this looked really cool... a handcrank laptop for 100$
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26547

Quote :

"BOFFINS AT THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a crank powered laptop that can be made for $100. The machines' AC adaptor doubles as a carrying strap, there is a hand crank to power them when there's no electricity. It can fold into more positions than an Indian yoga expert and is covered in a rubber coating so it is pretty tough. The big idea is that it will enable third world children to have access to IT and the boffins want to make 5 million to 15 million of the machines. It is not just third world countries either. MIT hopes to start buying them for all 500,000 middle and high-school students in the state. The machines are not exactly quick. They have a 500 mHz AMD chip and flash memory instead of a hard drive. It runs on Linux too. However the laptops can connect to Wi-Fi wireless networks and be part of "mesh" networks. The hand crank sounds a great idea, but apparently you only get 10 minutes of juice from a minute’s winding so it might not be so useful. "

[Edited on September 30, 2005 at 12:17 PM. Reason : link]

9/30/2005 12:16:56 PM

one min winding for 10 mins use sounds decent...

adapt it to some bicycle pedals or something heh

9/30/2005 12:20:05 PM

that'd get some of the nerd fatties to do something...

pedal while you're playing cs

9/30/2005 12:20:52 PM

"pedal faster! framerate's dropping!"

9/30/2005 12:22:37 PM

or a hole that they could have sex with that would power it for a while. but they'd only last a few seconds.

9/30/2005 12:23:06 PM

Quote :

""pedal faster! framerate's dropping!""

haha nice!

9/30/2005 12:38:51 PM

cool

9/30/2005 10:33:49 PM

Quote :

"The big idea is that it will enable third world children to have access to IT and the boffins want to make 5 million to 15 million of the machines. "

Just leave the people alone...
Dammit! if you don't know you are poor, you don't know it.

9/30/2005 11:28:35 PM

wind generator + computer worked fine for me

i guess its probably expensive though

9/30/2005 11:38:38 PM

takes overclocking to a whole 'nother level

imagine hooking one of these puppies up to a diesel engine

9/30/2005 11:44:06 PM