Brilliant, but I don't think it would work. Not enough juice. My rough back of envelope calculation says you'd need to turn a hand-crank for ~ 5 minutes to get 1 minute of laptop power. - Stephen Mack

The Hybrid laptop, very cool. - Bryan R. Adams

The same goes for the wireless keyboard and mouse combinations. - Paul W. Swansen

look at it like an alternator on a car. :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

That would be awesome! - Mathew™ one of a kind

They could use the technology from F-1, But I see the keys having a stroke like a old typwriter. But for 3 million dollars and cold beer I could make it work ;) - Tony C (Unrated) from fftogo

And how about the acceleration as the laptop is being moved around? - Todd Hoff

Stephen, I'm typing on my laptop hours upon hours every day. Surely I could get an extra half hour of juice per day from that, don't you think? - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

KERS for laptops. ;-) - Brian Sullivan

I don't think so -- unless you're really pounding the keys. Just regular key presses generate a negligible amount of kinetic energy, I think. I think a day of regular typing would get you only a few seconds. - Stephen Mack

mouse-clicks too. lots of liking these days - FF, twitter, reader, FB, etc - vijay

Stephen, you're crushing my dream here! ;-) But in case you're wondering, there are days when I am actually pounding away on the keys. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

just add a usb based foot platform/peddles.. so you can move ya feet and charge it up more. :o) sort of turbo ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Would this give enough energy I wonder? Might just be. In any case, a netbook has much lower power consumption than a regular laptop. Would be great if you could run a netbook on finger power. :) - Meryn Stol

Sorry to crush your dream! My math may be totally off. And newer laptops that use less power and need less cooling, this could work -- especially if you don't need to power a fan. - Stephen Mack

some possible yet slightly difficult to implement ideas :- Facepalms, Headdesks, ROFLMAOs, and ROFLs. - vijay

Rob's idea would work. I really want to set up something like this: http://www.wowinsider.com/tag... - Stephen Mack

This is interesting. Aren't the Japanese using technology that people walking up the stairs are generating energy for driving the lifts or something along the lines? - Guru Panguji

kinetic energy IS the way forward.. so much movement everywhere ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

keystrokes are too light, but having flat pendulum to make it swinging while in bag and charging might be more feasible - A.T.

once I designed a keyboard that was pressure sensetive and the software would have some features like understanding if you are angry and making it capslock :) or just some analog features for computer games. Unfortunately I checked and somebody already got the patent :) (well it was not worthy of geting a patent anyway) - denizoktar

howabout if it used the swaying movement of your laptop in a bag to charge the battery, similar to how a kinetic watch works? - clarke thomas

smart idea :) - Bindu Reddy

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea...: "Each key press recharges the laptop battery a little more. They're small, but they're many, and as chip energy consumption goes down and screens get better, the energy gained from keypresses might eventually exceed (or at least significantly amend) the energy consumed." - ⓞnor

http://slashdot.org/article...: "Compaq patents a keyboard that captures your kinetic energy. Magnets and coils on each key charge a small battery to augment the big one in your laptop." - ⓞnor

I really wish friendfeed would add support for Whatpulse. They do have an API, do give stats info in XML format, (although it's not RSS). You would be amazed at how many keys you type, how much you click, and how far you move your mouse every day, or even every hour. My stats: http://whatpulse.org/stats... That's a lot of energy that could be harnessed and put to good use, just going to waste (well, not completely to waste, since I am doing work a lot of the time) - April Russo (app103)

what about a body suite that saves all our movements and can power things we use the more we move? Shit that would make me workout more lol - Kyle Weller

I would think that you would stand a better chance using the methane produced by the average human. - Tony C (Unrated)