Juice Bag: First Flexible Solar Backpack

Looks nice, although a bit on the pricey side. But I can't see if it will power an iBook. One of their photos shows a dude on a laptop, but they only say ipods, GPS, etc. Anyone know?

As little power as the iBooks consume, 6.3 Watts is not likely to be enough - the battery on the latest 12 inch iBook is 50W*h, and if you're really lucky, you can get it to last for 6h, or a little more than 8W*h/h, or about 8W. And of course, the power consumption is higher, and the battery life lower, when you run the hard drive, the optical drive, turn up the speakers, or run any programs that require intense computations or graphics. 6.3 Watts might be enough to slowly charge the iBook while you're not using it though, I don't know.

As long as the voltage was adequate, even 1 Watt would be enough to slowly charge the iBook when it was off or "asleep" - Apple's laptop sleep mode being particularly good.

Here's how this works,

The battery on the laptop is 50 Watt - hours. The backpack generates 6 watts. So leaving the backpack outside for 8 hours would charge the laptop entirely. Leaving it outside for 2 hours would generate enough power to use the laptop for an hour and a half. Alternately, if you were, again, outside the whole time, you could make that battery last probably 20+ hours instead of 6 on a full charge. (8 watt hours consumed hourly, minus 6 from the backpack equals about 2 net consumption.)

I beleive that as long as the voltage in is adequate, it should trickle charge the computer (or really, its internal battery) with as much power as it has at the time.

I personally think the Voltaic looks more attractive. Also, wouldn't the angle of the panels on the Voltaic make for better charging?

This link below goes to a site with an animation showing a person handling the Juice Bag:
https://compactimpact.com/shopping/product_info.php?products_id=190

Personally, if the bag was a little more comfy looking, I would seriously be interested.

They also sell this at 3R in park slope if you are in Brooklyn and want a look. (Shopping local should be a treehugger ideal I would think.) I like the look much better than the Voltaic's because it didn't seem like a solar panel at first glance just a (goofy) design. It is actually more comfortable than it looks - it pretty much felt like a regular backpack when on but the weird thing is how stiff the solar panel/flap is - it was awkward and flipping it open would take some getting used to I think and I'm not sure how well it would wear.

According to the store owner - It doesn't charge laptops which suddenly makes it seem expensive.

It seems like a good idea at first but I would not leave my laptop out in the sun for hours, whether its in a bag or not. Getting separate solar cell chargers is a better option in my opinion.