I think wind-up radios and flashlights are a terrific idea. But it clearly has limits. The flashlight by my calculation has to be wound for 23 minutes to get a full charge, and the blurb implies the speed at which you wind significantly affects the charge rate, so in practice probably longer.

I really like the idea of wind-up power if I really need to, but having to this on a regular basis would be a pain. Whereas a solar recharger works for how ever long you have sunlight and you can recharge multiple devices and run more substantial devices like a food cooler/fridge.

I’m sure that’s why development money is still being wasted on much-lighter-but-still-rather-heavy long-term batteries.

Hand-cranked field telephones used to be the norm in the military. This wouldn’t be the first time equipment development had chosen a worse solution because it looks more modern….

Even for a campout I still think I’d rather pop in an alcohol cartridge. I wonder if they will run on ethanol as well? Then I can drink what I don’t use for computing.

I’m afraid it would take an awful lot of sunlight or a lot of hard cranking to do a single Linux kernel compile….

I have no idea how easily this can be scaled down to run a laptop, but given the potential demand, I don’t doubt lots of peple are working on this technology.

When it runs out of power you wind it up. Far superior to fuel cells. That firm already opened up Africa to people with high-tech needs for remote areas half a decade ago.