Pollution device? Believe it or not, some areas have advanced past the 1930s and don't get their power by burning stuff.

Once we get to the point where devices start including receivers, I'll be a happy camper. Every wire that connects to a device is one more wire to be tripped over and cause the device to be dropped. I'd much rather have a pad like this that can have the power cord tucked safely away.

as a very old poster, I almost forgot the wonders of my youth.
thanks for refreshing my memory.
and for what it's worth, I agree very much so.

It IS a pollution device. PERIOD again.

One of the great problems that the human race faces (and will face for a long time to come) is global warming.

Sure, things are pretty bad the way they already are, but just think about when every human being on earth get to have a few more kilowatts to play with, everyday (remember that there are millions of people in the world that don't have access (yet) to electric energy). Even if you think only about the heat (there are lots of other potential polluents and negative factors, but for simplicity's sake let's stick with this for the moment) - Heat emitted when generating energy. Heat emitted when converting energy. Heat emitted when transporting energy. Heat emitted when using energy. The way we use energy nowadays is nowhere near perfect. Just think about all the heat coming from electric appliances: almost all of it is wasted energy, energy that could not be used and had to be eliminated. But we know that heat cannot be eliminated, it has to pass to another medium, in our case, our atmosphere.

Even when not wasting resources, we are polluting. The fact that human beings gathers in a place to form a city is a MAJOR form of pollution. The point is to minimize the effects (as long as ther is human race, there won't be a "eliminating the effects"). And not wasting may be the better way to accomplish this. As Moof_in_Charge says, "Anytime a device uses 2.5 times the energy to do the same task as the original adapter it becomes a pollution device PERIOD."

This shouldn't be called wireless since it still does have an AC cord. A more accurate term would be a universal contactless charger. There was another concept I prefer from a couple of years back, but I don't remember the name of it. That design used a grid of small contacts embedded in the surface. That would have much less energy loss than inductive charging. It could actually save power compared to current setups because one universal charger could replace a power strip full of AC adapters. And if you were to add some intelligent circuity, power waste when nothing is connected could be minimized. Apple's chargers are already "smart." My Powerbook's AC adapter doesn't get warm when it's just maintaining a fully charged battery.

a dock is a dock is a dock.
BLEH