Down with Crap!

Down with crap devices! An aside: My kids came home from watching Wall-E with free crappy rubber encased disposable Wall-E watches. Ah, the irony.

We don't need more crap devices. I am less interested in the new tech gadgets. I want permanent tech. I want tech that helps people. You know, stuff that saves lives and makes our lives less miserable.

I want tech that reduces my reliance on the power grid. I want to reduce my electric bill, not increase it.

I don't want a PC in my router. I want my router to be a router. I want it to work without a lot of flashing lights. I want it to consume very little power. I want it to go to sleep at night until it gets activity coming from within my home network.

I want a GPS tracker that lasts (at a low fix rate) months or years on a small non-proprietary battery.

I want an e-book reader that lasts over a year on one charge.

I want to come to grips with the fact that battery powered devices that require recharging on a daily basis are part of the energy grid. There is no free ride. It takes power to make power.

No, wait a minute. I've got it.... I want personal tech that can be effortlessly recharged through solar power.

I still use my 22 year old Cassio CM-100 calculator. It does hex/octal/binary/decimal and boolean operations. It runs off of solar power. I've never had to think about replacing a battery or plugging it in for recharging.