Yay or Nay: Do solar chargers do it for you?
It was with some sadness that I finally accepted my second solar phone charger had given up the ghost. But after a handful of uses, on both models I tried, the charge no longer appeared, no matter how long I left the panel in the sun. I plugged my phone in - nada.
At first, I put this down to my own technical ineptitude, but then I spoke to two of the biggest tech gurus in this office, both of whom reported exactly the same failure to make their hand-held solar phone chargers work after the first few attempts. Why should this be? Is the technology just not up to it yet? I'd be fascinated to hear from anyone who owns a Power Monkey, Power Chimp, Freeloader or similar and find out what went wrong. Maybe our office is just cursed...
In your experience, do these problems affect all the popular brands, including Solio?
I presume they come with a one year warranty so why not get them replaced, the old one will get sent back to the manufacturer and they can either repair them and sell them reconditioned, or at least figure out what's causing the problems and attempt to fix the problem in future models.
It will be a few years before PV solar energy is really ready for portable devices. Currently, the PV cells are fragile, inefficient, and expensive.
Posted by: Andrew | November 22, 2007 10:40 AM