The Handcranked Laptop

Nice. A sub-$100 laptop for the kids and the hoi polloi ,* featuring a hand crank when the power's not around.

I have often felt that starting XP makes my Dell feel as if it is powered by steam and small boiler, or a rusty clockwork mechanism, or perhaps a misdirected lemming in a tiny brass wheel who finds it difficult to get up in the morning. It would nice to have a charging handle to spend those 3 or 4 minutes while it whirs and simmers and the weight chain is adjusted, rather more productively.

*Although we at Isengard.gov are using the greek phrase hoi polloi in its correct meaning of "the common people," rather than the incorrect but more hoi-polloish meaning of "the hoity-toities," "the fancy-living types," the "ravenous blood-sucking leeches fattening their stomachs on the backs of the masses," or "THE ARISTOCRATS!," it does not, in and of itself, indicate that we are insufferable smarty-pants. That may be established by independent means.