Imagine this: you’re at this mall somewhere. You have 3 hours or so to waste. You have your netbook with you and there is free Wi-Fi. No problem right? But what if you are low on battery? Or, if you have a 3-cell battery like I do and it runs outs in an hour or so?
It’s not always easy to find an outlet which you can plug your laptop adapter into. Worse, you may not have your charger with you at all times.
Electronics company RCA has the perfect solution for this situation: Airnergy. The name itself gives you an idea what it’s about. Airnergy is actually a system, more than a single device. RCA is aiming to get the whole thing up and running in order for devices to be able to “harvest” energy from Wi-Fi signals and use that to charge up batteries. Nice, huh?
Their flagship device is called the “Wi-Fi hotspot power harvester.” As it is pretty much in the testing stage, I am sure that they will find some other name for it before it is launched. This device looks just like the dongle used for wireless Internet services and can be connected to another gadget using a mini-USB port.
The gadget was shown at the recently concluded CES, and received quite a lot of attention. I wouldn’t mind having one myself! However, we will have to wait for several more months – at least – for RCA to release the dongle. The rumor is that it will go for $40. Too expensive? For what it can do, I don’t think so.
