I’ve been messing around with Solar energy again today…

It turns out that the Viliv S10 has a 9.5v input. Having an input voltage below 12V is always an advantage for solar work and it’s even better when the X70 car adaptor works on the S10. I’ve connected the S10 up to a 24W solar panel and it’s charging the device even when it’s in-use. Given pure sun (2hrs either side of peak sun) it should charge the S10 in about 5 hours. That’s 10 hours usage in 5 hours charging. Unfortunately the S10, like all other PCs, doesn’t fast-charge so this solution would probably work exactly the same with a 12W panel as only about 7W-10W is needed in charging.

The S10 has 3G built-in, a fast SSD and a great keyboard. It’s turning out to be a great solution for working completely off the power and wired networking grids.

I’ve written up some more details over at my little solar computing blog.

Warning: Direct solar charging without a regulator and a buffer power store is always a risk to your devices.

I learnt a huge amount when I did the Solar-UMPC tour back in 2007. Not only about solar energy (and it’s terrible efficiency rate) but also about using a mobile computer while on the go. I learnt about form factors, screens, ergonomics and productive processes. I’d love to do another tour this year so over at Solar-UMPC.com, the journal I used for the tour, I’ve taken another look at the UMPC sector to see what devices I could choose from. I’ve also given some thought to transflective screens which really help in this scenario. So much so that I’d take a weight hit just to get that Pixel Qi screen. The Viliv S7 would be the sensible all-round lightweight choice but if netbooks get Pixel Qi screen first, I’d probably use one of those despite the weight advantages of a UMPC.

I talk a little about the advances in smartphones and sadly, also see that some things haven’t changed at all.

Check it out here.

Would you consider a PC an essential item in times of emergency? A growing number of people rely on their laptops for important documents, photo storage and communications but even the latest efficient laptops are big and power-hungry. MID’s on the other hand, take about one quarter of the power of a modern laptop, run a complete Linux operating system, a rugged storage module and cram in all the comms required to connect with public and private networks or device. Its one of the few classes of PC device you could run easily with solar or wind power. 

If you unexpectedly had to go mobile, would you rely on a mobile phone, would you grab the laptop or would you rather take a MID?

Let me know. Emergency Computing for the Masses – Solar-UMPC.com

I’m going camping over the next four days. Here’s the kit that’s going to keep me productive.

[The Wife and little-one have planned a last-minute camping trip together and I was due to stay home and work but I've decided to go along and make a working holiday of it. Dads - this is the beauty of Ultra Mobile PC's!!!]

That’s a Samsung Q1 Ultra being charged from a Tablet Kiosk MP3400 which will be charged using a Sunlinq 25W solar panel. Also included are the Nokia N82 and a battery charging set. More details here.

Check out Solar-UMPC for some more mobile and solar-computing posts over the next few days.