Archive for September, 2009

Going Solar

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | located in mobility | No Comments »

True, you may not be planning to make any calls, message colleagues, or otherwise do anything resembling work while cycling across the playa in silver shorts and swim goggles at Burning Man, but the idea of staying connected while spending time outdoors is extremely compelling for many mobile business professionals. And depending on where you find yourself, the nearest power source may be miles away—unless that power source happens to be solar.

Solar-powered chargers for mobile phones, cameras, iPods, PDAs, and other handheld gadgets (laptops are too power hungry to easily charge using portable solar chargers—but at least one solar backpack on the market promises to charge even those) have come a long way in just a few short years. It used to be you had to rig such devices up yourself by wiring battery packs to solar panels. Today, you can buy inexpensive solar chargers for under $40 and even backpacks with built-in solar chargers for under $150.

Now, if you could just find a strong enough signal to send that email…