While browsing the web for a laptop for college I came across this interesting project called the Sol Laptop.
Apparently It isn't ready to ship out to Europe and America yet, but it looks promising (even if it only has atom).
Do you think that solar laptops can have place in the mainstream market in the future; or will it remain a niche?
no. I never use mine outside anyways... very few people do, at least at my school.
-_- Solar panels work on the ultraviolet light spectrum emitted from CFLs or Flourescent light tubes inside buildings. I don't guess you remember small solar electric calculators from the 80s and 90s.
not that well, and no, they do not. they work off the completely other end of the spectrum. they only use red spectrum light
Could they work? Absolutely, but what is the practical application for having a large solar panel sticking off (on) your computer? There's a very limited amount of practical applications for a laptop to be completely dependent on solar energy. A more practical approach is to market solar panels that has an adapter that would allow a laptop to charge via solar.
But then you run into the issue, could a laptop be charged while in use with solar energy on panels small enough to be portable?
With this specific one the solar pannel back detatches and allows you to run it with an extension cord.
Apparently Samsung tried the same thing, but it failed because it had just one pannel on the back of the lid and worked horribly.
How much thickness does that add to the overall laptop? I would imagine an extra inch, which takes the portability of the laptop by a great degree which would make a buyer think "well, I could just buy one to plug into a wall and have a faster more portable computer for the same price."
The only market I could see this working completely in is someone who works way out in the middle of nowhere and needs a alternative energy source... but again they could just buy a regular laptop and buy the solar panel laptop kit (that I mentioned in my last post that doesn't exist as far as I know) and have essentially the same product.
I agree with that, but a major issue is that solar tech isn't really where it needs to be. This thing has 4 pannels and to only run an atom, think about how many would be needed for any other processor. I think the main reason that there really isn't laptop solar chargers is because they would be bulky and cumbersome, and probably wouldn't do a good job without getting really expensive.
Main draw for me is how cheap it is with features. I feel lot a lot of people want good specs but really mainly use web and wordprocessing stuff on laptops. Frankly it seems like a good package to get a puke-proof, divable laptop, with solar panels, and gps functionality for $400 rather than get some mediocre cheap i3 laptop.
With the added cost of solar panels (which are very expensive) you'd be looking around 900 dollars for a low end laptop and the panels.
Me and my wife embarked on the adventure of buying solar panels for our house to power simple things (fridge, hot water heater and my computer) and the price to power those with batteries and such was like 20k american dollars. Crazy.
Maybe in the future if you could have a sort of hybrid system where you could use a AC adapter or solar panels but I can't see it catching to much attention.
On another note you should look at Lenovo Thinkpads, in my opinion there some of the best laptops around.
That laptops looks awful, so big and clunky and takes up a lot of space, a shit intel atom for a laptop that is, no dedicated graphics, horrible resolution of 1366 by 76tanaka satans resolution, only 320gb hard drive. This thing if they launch it is going to be like 2k but with shit hardware that only dumb rich people buy or stupid Eco talibans. You could buy a separate solar panera for like a couple hundred bucks and hook it up to a laptop also we have very thing solar panels in the milimeters which is like paper so why would we use these big solar panels, just put the new solar panels on top of the laptop screen and coat it in that.
What happens when it isn't a sunny day and you need to charge it?
I'm going to say you're both wrong :P. I'm fairly sure solar cells at the moment (traditional ones anyway) can only utilise visible light. Red spectrum light (talking infrared) is heat, and apart from anything else, solar cells reduce in efficiency when they heat up, but they can't use that type of light anyway. And UV light, they can't use either - plus, in some quick research I just did, apparently they put a coating over fluoro lights which changes the UV light to visible light; not sure if that right, but it sounds legit.
pretty sure it's right though, that they only utilise visible light...
Infared and ultraviolet are wasted as heat. Only visable light is absorbed.
It has a 10 hour battery apparently (I really doubt it's really 10hrs, probably more like 8 hours)
It's actually designed to be cheap, and it's currently being distrubuted in Ghana and Kenya for $300 (subsidized by their governments)
Yeah it has shit specs, but does really anyone need an i5 or i7 in their laptop except for powerusers and geeks? Who really cares about gaming on laptops anyways, and the atom can handle 1080p videos easily. I think people need to shift from plain specs over to features instead. Sure this thing looks ugly, but it's also durable.
It's not launching for 2k by the way, it's selling at $350, $400 if you want a submersible one.
This laptop is good for less developed country's without readily available electricity but has no practical use anywhere else. This laptop with the Google Balloon could really help out less developed countries move forward with all the information you can get online.
I like the idea. I mean imagine a person who has to being a laptop to work. They would be able to forego a charger and it would be rugged. I also like seeing laptops and desktops that come with linux. It would encourage people to migrate from windows/mac to linux.
I'm gonna say yes that it is possible to have a laptop with solar panel built into the back of the screen. I have designed a laptop like this about 3 years ago. The laptop's solar panel would charge a battery. This would be an alternate source of power for charging the device.You could relate it to how most phones know charge off usb, but we have a wall adapter and a car adapter. This would simply be the same just built into the device. Sadly though I never got to make a prototype due to money constrants.
