Sunny SA last place to find a solar charger

Tag : Cellphone Charger

Two questions arise: why would one want to use solar power forrecharging a laptop - or anything for that matter? And why wouldone expect to find such a thing in London and not Cape Town orJohannesburg.
The first question has three possible answers: virtuous, honest andcynical. They all apply.
The virtuous answer is that, as responsible human beings, we shouldall - damn, I sound like a slippery overpaid South Africanpolitician - do our best to preserve the planet. The honest answeris that the sun is a source of energy more reliable and less costlythan Eskom. The cynical answer is that it would have been nice tobe the first kid on the block to have a solar- powered laptopcharger. And if you could persuade 49 others to get one, you couldcall it a movement and become president.
Why should one expect to find such a charger in Tottenham CourtRoad rather than Adderley Street or the suburban mall? The answergoes to the heart of economics.
First, for metropolitan individuals here, the laptop is thecomputer of choice. This obviously profits the chiropractors.
Laptops are devilishly uncomfortable to work on but that's the costof mobility: few car or aircraft seats are as comfortable as homeones.
You can select from a range of discomforts. They range, likeRussian dolls, from the dwarfish handheld for people with slittyeyes and long fingernails, to a bonsai PC for people with fivefingers.
In High Street shops, PCs are hidden, stacked away like, I suppose,the dirty magazines. Second, you'd expect to find a solar laptopcharger on sale because awareness of using alternative sources ofpower is high here.
This raises the question: Is it odder to hunt for a solar-poweredcharger in a northern country with many laptops and little sunshineor a southern country with few laptops and much sunshine?
My assumption is that technological innovation involving solardevices is the result of many factors: social and ecologicalawareness; a large, affluent and socially conscious market; and aview of sunshine as a scarce, precious resource.
You wouldn't look for innovative ways of conserving water in arainy country. You'll battle to find cheap solar chargers in sunnySA.
Such power accessories exist in the United States but the solardevices for phones and appliances on shelves here are made inChina.
In accents that were layer cakes of Jamaican, Polish, West Africanand Cockney, the assistants assured me that such chargers existed.
And there they were, advertised on the web. One was at a bargainprice of