Ben Udkow sent me an email this morning telling me that I have to test this product… 😉 It’s the YoGen Max; a foot operated, portable charger for laptop computers. I’m all for trying alternative energy solutions, but would you buy / use something like this with your laptop? It’s bulkier than a typical AC adapter brick, so I can’t see many people carrying this around with them in their laptop bags. For me, the only time/place I would use this type of power source would be where there wasn’t an AC outlet handy. Camping? During power outages? I guess you could get a calf workout and power your laptop at the same time 😉 The YoGen Max isn’t yet available to the public, they are taking orders from resellers and distributors. I’m curious to see how much something like this costs.
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
Kinda cool.
Just think how convenient that would be if you needed to access laptop files while you were driving and your battery was running low. Just slip that baby down next to the …brake…no gas…umm…nevermind. :-p
lol
Actually, I can see that being a nice emergency back up in case you need to use your laptop and have no power connection. As long as they can keep it at a reasonable price.
Follow the links. It appears to be a “concept” item (as are most, if not all of the items on their site). Their “demo” video doesn’t display it producing power, just that it’s noisy and not hooked up to anything.
Further, the demo video was encoded using what appears to be the shareware version of cucusoft’s video converter — complete with the “watermark”. This doesn’t strike me as very professional looking demo.
Lastly, unless the laws of physics change, the amount of foot peddling needed to power a modern laptop will be considerable. Their concept item appears to “get around” this by having a bank of 12 AA batteries in the generator. The laptop will be powered off that while your pumping gives you a little “extra” time. Very little, I would expect.
This device’s time has passed.
Before planes had power, before netwbooks had 6 hrs battery life, perhaps I might have used one on a coast to coast to avoid a deep vein thrombosis…
Now I stay at home and teleconference. 😉
What ever happenned to this YoGen Max product? I’ve found loads of these articles talking about it all over the Internet but can’t find any for sale. Does anybody know whether they were ever released at all? I couldn’t even find anything on Ebay. Has the company gone out of business?