Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

OLPC Experiments With Cow-Powered Laptops

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the moove-over-solar-power dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its low-cost XO laptops: cows. "We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle," wrote OLPC's Arjun Sarwal, in an October 21 e-mail posted to one of the group's discussion lists. Sarwal and others are now finalizing the design of the cow-powered generator."

3 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Cows don't walk much by jrumney · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whenever I see a herd of cows, they are either standing still eating, or walking to the milking shed to be milked. Getting one to walk on a conveyer belt with no useful purpose for the cow is not going to be easy. They might get a more consistent supply hooking up a dynamo to the cow's jaw, chewing is something they do a lot of.

  2. disappointed by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And here I was thinking the article was going to be about powering laptops with methane...

    --
    This guy's the limit!
  3. Wow...Second world nations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aren't these laptops for developing nations such as India? If so, there are *FAR* better ways to generate energy. I know that cows are work animals, but this is a terrible application. Throw up a few photovoltaics, batteries, and regulators, and you have an generator unit costing the same that does not waste your work/food animal.

    Poor people using such animals tend to have a lot more common sense than we do. This is absolutely preposterous.