Solar USB drive and MP3 player to rise at CeBIT
By Marc Perton 
posted Mar 6th 2006 2:17PM
posted Mar 6th 2006 2:17PM
Taiwanese manufacturers A-Data and MSI plan to unveil solar-powered flash devices at CeBIT, though we're
not quite sure either one is a shining example of bright new ways to harness the sun's power. A-Data's offering, the
Solar Disk USB drive, is a fairly generic thumb drive with a solar-powered LCD that displays its available capacity.
Given that USB flash drives with LCD displays are becoming fairly common, and that the use of a solar cell to power
such a display isn't exactly earth-shattering (we seem to remember picking up our first solar calculator about 20 years
ago), we can't exactly see this feature commanding a premium. Meanwhile, MSI plans to demo a solar-cell MP3 player.
While that sounds like it could be promising, the solar cell won't be the sole source of juice for the prototype
player; rather, it'll help charge a conventional lithium battery. And given the amount of time audio players spend in
pockets, backpacks and purses, we somehow don't anticipate this giving the player much of a boost.
It would be much more clever to charge mp3 players from shaking when walking ;)
That it would.
Oh, and bad link from the main engadget.com site.
Is it just me or do men have better 'shake to recharge' skills than women...
Okay, this is a real lame implementation. Once the USB drive is unplugged there's no way the capacity changes. So basically you're using solar power to display something that is static. The much better implementation is using epaper technology. The display is updated while it's connected to the computer and when removed it's still visible with no power requirements.
Shake to recharge would require much more bulk and much more weight (moving magnet, coil, capacitor, etc.).
trust me you get bored after 2mins of shaking the stupid thing.. setting it out on the desk in a classroom or outside on a table is much easier.
small solar panels are light and cheap, cant believe no one has thought of this before (on mp3 players).