Windows Mobile 7 May Power Mini Laptops, Says Qualcomm [Windows Mobile 7]

Qualcomm displayed a 3G, $299 mini-laptop this day made by Inventec that is supposedly designed to run Windows Mobile 7 in the future (it runs Linux now). Windows Mobile 7, which supports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset, will in turn make the company more competitive in the mini-laptop space processor that’s currently being dominated by Intel, AMD and Via. This meshes with what NVidia states about its Tegra processors being in Windows Mobile devices, meaning that WM7 could be Microsoft’s way of covering both phones and mini-laptops with the same OS. [Yahoo]

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Casio Oceanus Watch: Solar Drives Atomic [Watches]

The Casio Oceanus Super Chronograph is the world’s first solar chronograph watch that syncs with atomic clocks. Using a multi-band radio, the watch can check in with the US, UK, Germany and Japan to keep precise time—and solar energy consumption means that you’ll potentially never run out of battery (the watch can draw energy from indoors and outdoors alike). In other words, this Oceanus could literally always have the correct time—which is a little too much accountability for our tastes. [Casio via techfresh]

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Electricity Generator Gets Its Power From Waste Heat [Electricity]

Dallas’ Southern Methodist University is now recycling energy with one of the first commercial electricity generators that use thermoelectricity—the act of drawing power from waste heat. The machine operates by using heat given off by other processes (such as manufacturing) to boil liquids, which then turn into steam, which then turns an electricity-generating turbine.

ElectraTherm’s Waste Heat Generators recover heat from various sources without any specialized electronics or hard-to-maintain components. By boiling water up to 200°F, the generator can produce from 25kW to 1MW of fuel-free, emission-free electricity.

About 50% of all fuel burned by industrial sources becomes “waste heat.” Though businesses can try to use fuel as efficiently as possible, nearly seven quadrillion Btu of waste heat still escapes to do nothing but warm the atmosphere. But ElectraTherm says that its products, if used widely, could recover the equivalent electric output of 92 500MW gas-fired power plants.

The company states that the university will recoup its buy cost in three to four years, with electricity costing about three to four cents per kwH during that time. After the payback period, the cost per kWH will drop to less than a penny. If only ElectraTherm’s machines could be hooked up to the hot air our politicians will spew come election day, then all our nation’s energy problems would be solved. [Electratherm via Cnet]

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Crazy Inbred Dual-Screen Laptop Includes Everything But The Banjo
Here’s the real $100 laptop. At first look I thought it was a rather impressive hardware hack, but it turns out to be the rare Xentex Dual Screen Laptop, available to purchase (in a slightly beaten up state) on eBay….

Here’s the real $100 laptop. At first look I thought it was a rather impressive hardware hack, but it turns out to be the rare Xentex Dual Screen Laptop, available to buy (in a slightly beaten up state) on eBay.

And it has good reason to be rare. If you thought that the tablet Personal computer was a niche product, the Xentex makes it look positively iPod-like. The notebook has one one-of-a-kind feature. It folds up twice, which is just as well as when fully splayed the monster-machine is nearly as wide as two regular notebooks, at 19.5″ across. Those two 13.3″ screens actually move independently, so you can flip one and share your display, much like sharing a set of earbuds.

If you are thinking about buying this, check the description carefully. There’s not much, aside from the floppy drive (!) which still works. The navigational “nipple” is missing, hooking up a hard drive will require a custom cable and the plastic latches which secure the screens are broken. Despite all that, we kind of like the Xenex, precisely because it is so quirky. In fact. the design is so unlikely that we suspect that the hefty notebook’s father was also its cousin.

Auction page [eBay via the Reg]

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