Slashdot Mirror
Toyota Announces the Winglet, Wannabe Segway Killer
Various gadget/toy venues are writing about the Toyota Winglet, a diminutive Segway-like personal transporter. (Toyota took over Sony's robot division a year back.) It comes in three sizes and offers about a third the speed and a quarter the range of the Segway; on the upside, it charges in an hour vs. Segway's 10 hours. Wired writes: "The Winglet is the first gadget to duplicate the celebrated, and often mocked, navigation system of the Segway Transporter."
Segway Killer
You can't kill what's already dead.
buy a bicycle. As much range as you have energy for, fits almost the same places a segway does, doesn't use gas, cheaper, and get this, is actual exercise. Something most people in the places that can afford one of these things can use more of.
Monstar L
I was severely disappointed with the Segway. I hear about the "revolution in personal transportation" PR they had going, and I expected one of three things:
* jetpacks
* hovercars / flying cars
* teleporters
And instead, I get a golfcart cut in half with a gyroscope and scooter handlebars added. What a fucking disappointment.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It has a range of 5km. But it's so small I can probably use it to drive from my car to grocery store on opposite side of parking lot.
This could be the answer to that ubiquitous American dilemma: How can I get from one end of Walmart's parking lot to the other without getting any actual excercise?
I have seen one perfectly valid use of the segway, and having travelled the same area for the same length of time, agree it would be worthwhile: Large Conventions. Seriously. If you have a convention you're going to be at for 12+ hours out of a day, spanning anywhere from a quarter to 2 miles (think fairgrounds perhaps here) then being able to hang a ride on a device like that could be a godsend for your legs (when I was doing it on foot I barely had enough energy left to either walk the half mile back to my hotel, or worse yet the half mile to my car followed by a commute out of town to my hotel.) For things like that it makes perfect sense. And according to the guy I talked to who had one, it used basically no power while idle, so if you plan out your route through the convention center well, you can spend all day there and only use perhaps 3/4 of your charge. Furthermore there ARE people with knee and hip injuries who it would help feel less bad about their condition that running around on canes/crutches/wheelchairs. Look I'm hip I've got a segway. It's not that I can't walk, I'm just too cool to do it! :)
Just my 2 cents.
I actually want this to take off.
So do I, but unfortunately it doesn't have a jet pack, it's just low speed scooter.
That's so kids can become fat and lazy before they're old enough to play videogames and browse slashdot.
Seriously. If you have a convention you're going to be at for 12+ hours out of a day, spanning anywhere from a quarter to 2 miles (think fairgrounds perhaps here) then being able to hang a ride on a device like that could be a godsend for your legs (when I was doing it on foot I barely had enough energy left to either walk the half mile back to my hotel, or worse yet the half mile to my car followed by a commute out of town to my hotel.)
No offense, but if you have trouble walking 2 miles in a couple of hours, you should probably use every opportunity to get some exercise.
Your point about Segways being a kind of hipper wheelchair makes sense, though.