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MS Design Lets You Put Batteries In Any Way You Want
jangel writes "While its strategy for mobile devices might be a mess, Microsoft has announced something we'll all benefit from. The company's patented design for battery contacts will allow users of portable devices — digital cameras, flashlights, remote controls, toys, you name it — to insert their batteries in any direction. Compatible with AA and AAA cells, among others, the 'InstaLoad' technology does not require special electronics or circuitry, the company claims."
Hmm, way prior art and even previous commerical application. According to the Wikipedia article:
Also from the same article on very basic electronics - something I learned at a 15 month tech school when I was 18 (1997):
I also know some early model/prototype charging mats used this tech - at least a decade ago.
Tomorrow, I'm going to file a patent on using a potato for a battery!
(I know where I would like to insert a car battery on Balmer)
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Let's say it use 2 batteries and the user place them like this
[- +}{+ -]
Well... doesn't look like it's going to work...
how long until
Not exactly unknown invention...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Not only that, they patented an inferior alternative. This thing is mechanical, and looks to be designed with very tight tolerances.
Put the battery in at a not-quite-perfect angle, or let the contacts move a bit and *bang* you've got a short.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
A very clever idea, probably thought up by an employee in his spare time and "stolen" by Microsoft under the employment agreements all companies make their employees sign. You know, "we own everything you think of during company time and on your own time". Seems M$ has an "Edison" or a "Farnsworth" or a "Telsa" among their grunts.
Having said that, this idea probably won't work on all batteries as there are many rechargeable batteries that have very short positive terminals, or positive terminal faces surrounded by a large connected metal front which would result in a short circuit with this type of battery holder. Also if "mercury" batteries are still made they had the NEGATIVE terminal with the extended post (I remember my Father's old Zenith "owl eye" transistor radio used mercury AA cells and the instructions showed to insert them BACKWARDS!)
Still, this is one of those simple "I should have thought of that" things. Is this the future of Microsoft, a think tank of patents they license while selling nothing?
It doesn't require complicated addition wiring - each cell will have one +ve and one -ve output in total, which can be wired in series as you see fit.
I don't think I own a single device that uses multiple dry cell batteries. Most .99 cent plastic all-purpose dry-cell battery holders have the option of wiring it in a series or parallel. I agree that batteries being inserted in the wrong way are a classic engineering conundrum. The problem is that technologies that use giant array's of disposable dry cells are increasingly disappearing from the landscape because rechargeable/embedded batteries are increasingly becoming the norm. Additionally, most people (including my absurdly technologically incapable grandmother) know how to put a battery in something properly. So, congratulations MS for inventing something that solves an obsolete problem, and in a way doesn't really solve anything. The designer of the product that uses such a device would still have to design some type of routing system to compensate for the "either direction" nature of it. Basically it creates a problem that actually makes the product harder to use. Batteries have poles, and as such it is important how they are connected to the device, classic spring & plate style battery holders make it difficult for you to put the battery in the wrong direction for a reason. This seems like an Onion headline, unfortunately it most likely isn't. Any problem this product solves has already been solved in a more graceful way many many years ago. Leave it to Microsoft to un-invent the wheel an then present that accomplishment to the world, in the same way a cat presents dead animals it finds in the yard to its owner.
For once, we're hearing about an authentically clever
No it isn't.
design which solves a real problem
No it doesn't. You would have to have an incredibly bad mental handicap to not be able to put batteries in a device correctly.
sanely applicable to be patented
If it isn't done with a few diodes (see the linked comment) it's a Rube Goldberg kludge and could be patented, but a Graetz bridge rectifier would be elegant, cheap, and completely unpatentable.
Free Martian Whores!
This is what qualifies as innovation these days in Redmond? They keep cranking out new (old) versions of Office, killed the Kin, offer a new (old) Xbox, and the Zune is still a non-factor. If they spent their time working on real innovation instead of 7th grade electronics projects, they might actually make some nice stuff.
I have always thought MS products are crap, and therefore any price over $0.00 is a rip-off. Now they are proving the point: Microsoft is saying that their user are becoming too stupid (pronounced "stoopid") to put batteries the correct way in to their gadgets.
Dude, they employ thousands of the smartest CS people in the United States. That might not translate into products you like, but fucking try to acknowledge a little reality through the smell of your own farts.
When have they ever proved that they have the smartest CS people in the US (This stupid obsolete battery thing doesn't count, see my earlier comments on it if you want to know why I think the battery 'invention' is pointless and kind of dumb)? Say what you want about Microsoft abilities as a company, but describing them as 'innovators' in any way is comically inaccurate.