Tired of lugging around a charger for your laptop? Canadian company WeWi telecommunications is promising to deliver a laptop with its own built-in power source: a series of solar panels that fold you can unfold to recharge the battery or directly power the computer.
The SOL Laptop is a rugged laptop designed for use in developing nations, and the company behind it is making some bold promises for price and performance.
According to WeWi the SOL Laptop will get 8 to 10 hours of battery life, and under ideal conditions you’ll be able to recharge the battery in about 2 hours using nothing but solar panels. It’s expected to launch in Ghana for around $300, but US pricing is pegged at closer to $350.
The laptop is said to have a 13.3 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, up to 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and a 1.86 GHz Intel Atom D2500 dual-core processor with GMA 3600 graphics. It runs Ubuntu Linux.
That’s an interesting processor choice. On the one hand, Intel’s Atom chips are low-power processors that could help support the long battery life claims. On the other hand, this is one of Intel’s most power-hungry Atom chips, with a TDP of 10W. A newer Clover Trail chip might have been a better choice — but going with an older chip probably helps keep the price down.
WeWi says the notebook has stereo speakers, 3 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, an SD card reader, 10/100 Ethernet, GPS, dual-channel 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 3G/4G modem.
While the basic specs sound about right for a $300 laptop, it’s hard to imagine a model with up to 10 hours of battery life and built-in 4G LTE shipping for that price — and that’s even before you add the solar panels.
It’ll be interesting to see if the SOL Laptop ever actually sees the light of day. Yes, pun intended.
via:OMG Ubuntu
