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My understanding was that it never shipped as more than a concept because it turns out to be very hard to build such a thing that's not trivially breakable (a b

My understanding was that it never shipped as more than a concept because it turns out to be very hard to build such a thing that's not trivially breakable (a bunch of public demos had failures like that) and doesn't damage the laptop when attached, since for all their durability compared to many older and modern laptops, they're cheap plastic. I imagine if the company hadn't gone belly-up because the predicted demand didn't really materialize, they might have refined that further, but. It might be kind of fascinating to revisit how powerful you could make such a device in this day and age of manufacturers having spent many more years trying to improve power/performance in small form factors, but I'm not sure anyone would professionally touch such an idea now, given how visibly it went belly-up... As far as the human energy cost not mattering - have you ever tried cranking something with mechanical resistance for 6 minutes straight to get an hour of battery life? It's draining, even with practice. Something interesting might have been something more like a bike pedal mechanism, since that's something a lot of humans have practice at doing without exhausting themselves, but that might still have problems with the amount of resistance required to turn it into electricity...

em-bee 3y ago
it never shipped as more than a concept because... right, exactly. As far as the human energy cost not mattering i think you misread that, unless you are not responding to me. what i am saying is that the human energy of poor people is no different than the human energy of wealthy ones, so the argument that poor people in particular would not have the energy to use a hand crank is nonsense, because, as you rightly say, turning a handcrank is exhausting, but it is exhausting for everyone. (and i know that from experience. we used to mill our own flour with a handcrank) bike pedal mechanisms for electricity have been spotted in some OLPC deployments, as far as i remember. but a laptop is not the only thing using electricity, so if pedal mechanisms are a good idea, i'd expect to see them more often. my impression is that they are only good as a last resort, when better options are not available.
- rincebrain 3y ago
  The remark was that in places where you cannot get reliable power, you often have a more physically intense day to day, so the "cost" of exhausting yourself to power something is "higher" compared to the less physically intensive lifestyles of many people in environments with stable electricity available.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    yes, but physical activity makes your body more energetic, thus capable of spending more energy. so the less physically intensive your average day is, the less energy you have to power a handcrank because your body didn't develop the capacity to expend that kind of energy. therefore i expect the end result to be the same.

em-bee 3y ago

it never shipped as more than a concept because... right, exactly. As far as the human energy cost not mattering i think you misread that, unless you are not responding to me. what i am saying is that the human energy of poor people is no different than the human energy of wealthy ones, so the argument that poor people in particular would not have the energy to use a hand crank is nonsense, because, as you rightly say, turning a handcrank is exhausting, but it is exhausting for everyone. (and i know that from experience. we used to mill our own flour with a handcrank) bike pedal mechanisms for electricity have been spotted in some OLPC deployments, as far as i remember. but a laptop is not the only thing using electricity, so if pedal mechanisms are a good idea, i'd expect to see them more often. my impression is that they are only good as a last resort, when better options are not available.

rincebrain 3y ago
The remark was that in places where you cannot get reliable power, you often have a more physically intense day to day, so the "cost" of exhausting yourself to power something is "higher" compared to the less physically intensive lifestyles of many people in environments with stable electricity available.
- em-bee 3y ago
  yes, but physical activity makes your body more energetic, thus capable of spending more energy. so the less physically intensive your average day is, the less energy you have to power a handcrank because your body didn't develop the capacity to expend that kind of energy. therefore i expect the end result to be the same.