This article describes “wireless battery charging” in a new laptop model. It sounds like you put the laptop on a stand and plug in the stand. The time it takes to charge the laptop is the same as if using a regular adapter.
My question is, is this just a bunch of hype or am I missing something? The laptop still has to be placed in contact with some device that’s plugged in. Who cares whether the laptop sits on a stand or has a plug for charging?
You’d be surprised at how much technological development is driven by people’s laziness…
I mean, come on - it takes effort to plug in your laptop!
From the article -
I’m guessing that you wouldn’t need to buy adapters, multiple laptops of different varieties could recharge using this one station. Depending on the environment it could be useful.
Well now, if things could be set us so that I could power up any of several different items (say, my cellphone, my laptop, my palm pilot, etc.) from the same charging station - even if they could only be charged up one at a time - then I’d be all for it. Otherwise, I’d just be trading off plugging in the device with plugging in the charging station, and leaving the charging station plugged in all of the time would probably waste electricity somehow.
(Then again, my electric toothbrush uses a charging station, and that hasn’t bothered me any.)
It’s more about convenience than laziness. I got a “wireless” (really should be called “plugless”) charger for my cell phone, a Palm Pre. The Pre is pretty small, and its tiny charging port is difficult to uncover. Plus, unplugging and replugging on a daily basis causes some wear and tear, and over time the port, which doubles as the USB port, might not work as well, or at all.
The Palm Pre no-plug charger, called the Touchstone, is pretty nice. I just set the phone on it, magnets hold it in place at a slight angle, and that’s it. No more fiddling with a plug in the dark, or worrying about my charger cord falling behind the TV.
In my experience a good chunk of the fatal to very expensive damage to laptops scenarios occur from tripping over the power adapter cord and having the strain on the power plug damage the motherboard. This mitigates that.
one of the first failures and needed repairs to laptops is to power jacks. depends on the age and design of the laptop and skills of the owner it can be a costly repair.
Also; I believe that this is just the first incarnation of a technology that will eventually be expanded so that rather than setting the laptop or phone or other device on a dock you have a transmitter device that can charge your laptop anywhere within x feet.
See:
and
Apparently the technology I am thinking of is only sort of related, not the same on a smaller scale as I first thought.
Am I the only one who has had to replace laptop chargers because of damage to the cords? Every laptop I’ve owned has required at least one replacement and my wife is on the third for hers. Over time, stress on the wires weakens the connection at some point and it stops working. Fortunately, we’ve never damaged the jack that’s part of the laptop itself, which is much more expensive.
If only to save me $60 on a replacement charger, I’d consider getting something that could charge from a stand without a wire.
My Mac has a magnetic cord - you just have to get it close to the port to have it connect itself, and if you trip over it it disconnects with no damage. Very smart little dude.
Wireless transfer of energy… Nikola Tesla had the answer right back in the 19-th century !!!