The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Persistence, Jury-Rigging, and Ingenuity Against All Odds

We seldom post about books at Gizmodo, but if this story of a self-taught Malawian boy using junkyard parts to build windmills and bring life-changing electricity to his village doesn't make you misty-eyed, then you must be one cold-hearted bastard. More »

Now Available

MSI's first AMD Neo-based netbook is available today, along with a new home video monitoring kit from Vue. More »

Dubiously Named Inflatable 'Speed' Boat Navigates Pools At Blistering 2MPH

Let me save you $100 with a tip. The wind, old as time and completely free, will push your kid around the pool on a rubber raft faster than this inflatable speedboat. More »

Little Ionic Winds Stop Laptops From Burning Body Parts

We first heard about ionic winds cooling down computers by 250% in 2007. Two years later, Tessera—a chip-packing company—has modified the technology so that it would fit into a working laptop. More »

Power-sipping Touchscreen MSI Wind Top All-in-One Is Cheaper Than Some Netbooks

MSI has gotten more official with its Wind Top AE1900—the nettop that only needs a 45W trickle of power—finally giving us a price: $529. Which is cheaper than some "netbooks" nowadays. More »

MSI Wind Battery 'Mod' Can Go All Night (and Day) Long

Armed with an MSI Wind U115, 9-cell battery and some time, Johannes from Eee PC.de created what very well may be the Sting of netbooks. Stamina—er, battery life—was an astounding 25 hours. More »

A Tour of MSI's Thin and Light X340 Laptop

Every major netbook manufacturer has their own budget MacBook Air-like system coming to the market soon. Here's the first look at something slightly more spacious, MSI's X340, a full-sized 13.4-inch laptop in a petite frame. More »

Pantech IM-S410: The First Phone Operated by Stank Breath

Your smartphone is cute...kind of a novelty, though, really. Sure, it puts worldwide communication in your pocket. But can it recognize wind? More »

MSI Wind U120 On Sale Now for $470

It's been out overseas for some time, but it looks like the MSI Wind U120 has gone on sale in the US. More »

The MSI Wind for Lovers

A netbook might make an alright Valentine's Day gift (depending on your lady/guy), but does it really need to resemble a Valentine's card? More »

GotWind CES Tent Uses Solar and Wind Power to Recharge Gadgets, Not Tired Bloggers

GotWind is no stranger to charging gadgets using wind and solar power, and at CES this year there were on hand to recharge people's mobiles with a handy locker/charging station for geeky journalists. More »

Boing Boing Gadgets' Hackintosh-Netbook Compatibility Chart

Spoiler: If you're going to buy a netbook for Hackintoshing, try the MSI Wind or a Dell Mini 9. Rob explains more at BBG. [Boing Boing Gadgets]

Revolving Door Uses You to Make Energy

It's an alarmingly simple concept that claims to be the world's first application: Netherlands-based company Natuurcafé La Port installed a power generator into a revolving door. Fantastic, but it took us this long?

Dealzmodo: $300 MSI Wind or Acer Aspire at Microcenter

If you don't have big plans this weekend, Microcenter will be selling both the MSI Wind and Acer Aspire One for $300 in-store only on November 22nd. After recent price reductions, both 1.6GHz Atom systems retail for $350. But as we all learned in grade school, $50 is $50. And if you can ever save $50, that's just more money you can blow on ice cream, comic books and Garbage Pail Kids cards. UPDATE: My brain added a "one" to the Aspire. It's just a normal Acer laptop, not a netbook. [Lilliputing]

Mathmos Glowing Wind Lights Probably Best For Breezier Locales

Mathmos' eight-inch tall windlights are pretty simple—just a generator, 2.4-inch propeller and two LED lights—but that doesn't stop them from having their own cute, glowing eco-charm. Basically when the wind blows strongly enough, they light up: dot them about your garden and you'd have a great display, but only if the wind is blowing. If you're in London, Jason Bruges Studio has arranged hundreds of them into a 45-foot high Aeolian Tower scultpure at the Southbank which is showing until November 16th. But if you want just one, it'll cost you around $18. [Technabob]

Dealzmodo: MSI Wind Now $350 at Best Buy

Here's a fantastic deal that appears to be a permanent price reduction. The MSI Wind, which we reviewed and like a lot, recently arrived at Best Buy for $399. Not bad. But now the price has been dropped down to $350. Even with the Wind U120 hitting this December, the original Wind is a very nice machine (10" screen, XP, 1.6GHz Atom), especially with the recent firmware performance boost. [Best Buy via OhGizmo!]

Dealzmodo: MSI Wind Now Available for $430

MSI keeps upping the rebates on their Wind U110 netbooks, probably to stay competitive with the cheaper Acer Aspire One. If you're interested, the 3-cell battery Wind, good for about 2 hours of battery life, can be picked up for $430 after rebates. (A 6-cell Aspire One is just $400). The Wind has 120GB of storage as opposed to 160GB on the Aspire, but the Wind also features a 1-inch-bigger, 10" screen. Those interested in a 6-cell Wind will pay $480 after rebates. [Amazon via Lilliputing]

Army Keeps Military Green Push, Embraces Solar, Wind, and Bio-Fuel Power

The Army is following the Air Force's green efforts to cut their energy expenditures and, presumably, don't see their weapons budget cut. They will install solar panels and windmills, while investing in bio-fuels and energy conservation in bases all around the country. According to Keith Eastin, assistant Army secretary for Installations and Environmen, this will be good not only for the military, but for all of us: More »

MSI Wind Now on Sale at Best Buy

MSI has announced that people wishing to get their hands on an MSI Wind U100 Netbook can stroll into their nearest Best Buy starting today and pick up the 10" 3-cell version with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and Windows XP for $399. Before your rush out to get one though, keep in mind that the updated U120 version with HDSPA could hit before Christmas. More »

Google's World-Saving Clean Energy Plan Costs $4.4 Trillion, Dramatically Shrinks Google's Power Bill

Google, who in aggregate, effectively knows everything, unsurprisingly has a solution for our energy problems. The plan, called Clean Energy 2030 will cost $4.4 trillion over its 22-year span, if we start on it right now. Google says it'll give us back a net of $1 trillion, like half of which will be savings on Google's massive power bill notes the former Fake Steve. More »

Queen of England Buying the World's Largest Wind Turbine

We don't know how much it cost her, but word is that the Queen of England has put down some mega-bucks to buy the world's largest wind turbine. The 10-megawatt monster machine built by Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, California will have a wingspan larger than two soccer fields and will stand 574 feet tall when completed. The windmill is expected to displace two million barrels of oil as well as 724,000 tons of CO2 over its lifetime. It will also serve as the flagship for Clipper's Britannia Project, an effort to produce massive new turbines on deep-sea floating platforms. If all goes as planned, the Queen's windmill will light up thousands of British homes starting in 2012. [CNN]

MSI Talks About Future of Wind, HSDPA on Way

In an interview with Impress, MSI's Neo Lin (Notebook Product Manager) leaked some details of upcoming Wind mini-notebook revisions. The big news is that HSDPA will be coming to the new U91 (8.9") and U120 (10") systems. But the (translated) interview has some other interesting info other than just the specs on new models. Lin reveals a great geek factoid explaining where the name "Wind" came from (Wi-Fi Network Device). And that just made our day. Seriously. He also warns that dual core Atoms require twice as much power, a design obstacle that all netbook manufacturers will need to overcome. [Impress via Engadget]

Graphene Could Become World's Best Super Battery

You know graphene, the super material that's strong enough to withstand diamond cutters? Turns out that not only may it replace silicon as the de rigeur component of microchips, it's on track to becoming the next megabattery as well. Engineers at the University of Texas in Austin have found a way to store electrical charge in graphene-based ultracapacitor devices, and their discovery could revolutionize the renewable energy industry. More »

NASA Wind Map Shows You Where The Greatest Gusts Blow

In an effort to figure out the best areas to harvest wind energy, scientists from NASA's Earth Science Division have used several years of QuikSCAT satellite data to produce some pretty awesome looking wind power density maps. According to them, if the areas with high wind power—an average wind of greater than 30 knots (45 miles an hour)—were tapped, they could potentially supply 10 to 15 percent of the world's energy needs. More »

MSI Wind Preorders Finally Shipping

Hooray! If you preordered an MSI Wind and suffered through a few delays, know that the mini-notebooks are shipping now. Remember they're only coming with a 3-cell battery, and apparently the $499 6-cell and $399 Linux versions aren't hitting until September. The $479 Wind should be available at popular retailers somewhere between now and soon. More »

MSI Wind Getting Desktopified

Just as MSI saw the opportunity to create an Eee of their own with the Wind, so too will they create an Eee Box with their Wind mini-desktop. The internals will be very similar between each version of the Wind, with the desktop featuring the same 1.6Ghz Atom processor and 35W power supply as the laptop, along with Windows XP, 1GB of RAM (expandable to 2), DVD (burner?), up to 160GB of storage and Wi-Fi. Priced between $199 and $299, the Wind mini-desktop is not slated for a US release when it hits this September...but were the Eee Box a huge success in the States, it wouldn't be crazy for that to change. [infoworld]

MSI Wind Running Mac OS X Also Thinks It's a Mac Pro

It's not even out yet and people have already hacked Mac OS X to run on the MSI Wind. Like with other non-Apple Leopard boxes, the little computer believes it is a Mac Pro, which is OK because we all want to be Mac Pros when we grow up. This version is still lacking some fine tuning, but it runs quite well according to Insanely Mac forum member Jav: More »

Asus Eee PC 901 and 1000 Dates Soft-Announced

This isn't first-hand word from Asus, but Liliputing is reporting that a member of their readership got an extremely confident US release date from the Asus pre-sales department for both the Atom-based Eee PC 901 and 1000. And that date was July 8th—one day later than MSI's Wind. We'll let you know if we hear anything official from Asus on the matter. [liliputing]

MSI Wind Delayed Again, Now to July 7

Reports have been floating around from various forums and tipsters that the MSI Wind was delayed yet again. MSI has confirmed the delays with a representative explaining that the problem is still industry battery shortages. More »