Sol, the $350 solar-powered rugged Ubuntu laptop that won’t be usable in the sun
If you’re gifted with independently manipulable eyebrows, now would be the time to raise a single brow. An inventor in Canada claims to have created a solar-powered Ubuntu laptop that can run directly from power generated by its built-in solar panels, or recharge its 10-hour battery with just two hours of sunshine. If that wasn’t enough, the laptop — pretentiously dubbed Sol — is ruggedized for military and off-road use and you also get built-in GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi, and 3G/4G LTE. The best bit, though, is the price: The Sol will cost just $350 — or $400 if you want a submersible, waterproof model.
Your bullshit meter, which has been steadily climbing, has probably just exploded — and rightly so, because this laptop is almost certainly vaporware. While it’s technically possible to build a solar-powered laptop, it is incredibly unlikely that the world’s first solar-powered laptop would enter the market at just $350. This isn’t just a cheap laptop, either — while the CPU (an old Atom D2500) and display (13-inch, 1366×768) are nothing to brag about, built-in GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, and 4G LTE are almost unheard of at the $350 price point. (Read: What is LTE?) The Sol is ruggedized, too, with “durable, reinforced materials, complex military industrial design and architecture” — and, as you probably know, ruggedized, military-oriented gear is expensive. A brand-new Panasonic Toughbook — the standard military-issue laptop that you see in TV shows and movies — will set you back around $5,000.
Putting our skepticism aside for a moment, though, here’s how the Sol works — in theory. Externally, the Sol looks like a pretty standard plastic laptop that has had some aggressive-looking “ruggedized” panels glued on. When you need to recharge the battery, there’s a flap on top of the laptop that flops down to reveal four solar panels. These panels produce enough juice to power the laptop directly from the sun, or to recharge the battery in two hours. This part of the equation is actually somewhat feasible: Solar panels can produce around 10 watts per square foot, and a laptop with those specs probably consumes around 20-30 watts.
On the software side of things, the Sol runs Ubuntu. Other than that, though, and the almost unbelievable list of specs, we know almost nothing about the Sol. We don’t know how rugged it is, we don’t know when it’s coming to market, and we have absolutely no idea how WeWi (the Canadian company behind it) is going to sell it for $350. It doesn’t help that all of the images on the Sol website appear to be 3D renders, too — and that the only real photo of the Sol laptop (right) is clearly a not-rugged-at-all prototype.
The Sol is being targeted, unsurprisingly, at developing countries that have lots of sunlight, such as Ghana in Africa. With a cellular modem, the Sol could really be quite a boon for villagers that are miles away from the nearest internet connection. The added bulk of the solar panel array, the reduced need for ruggedization, and the prevalence of electricity and internet connectivity, probably mean that the Sol won’t ever be a success in the Western world. Plus, I think WeWi might’ve overlooked one deal-breaking flaw when it comes to solar-powered laptops: Have you ever tried using a laptop when you’re sitting in direct sunlight?
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