Cranky Green Gifts
I
f the thought of buying yet another dozen AA cells is abhorrent, you may want to consider hand cranking as a means of recharging your products, and we're not talking wind-up dolls.
But is it cooler than the I-Pod?
The Eco Media Player is many things rolled into one: it's a wind-up personal entertainment device, playing music and DVDs on its 2-inch screen, it's an LED flashlight and it can supply emergency power for your cellphone. But it's pricey at $425.
Available from multipoweredproducts.com, it has a 2GB internal memory and can play up to 40 minutes of music per minute of hand-cranking. Fully powered, it can play music for 20 hours or 10 hours of video, but but you may be quite cranked by then, as it would have taken you 30 minutes of winding! Better to use the USB cable for such marathon sessions.
Lighting your Way
An order of magnitude lower in price is the Wind 'N Go Portable Lantern/Radio for those of us with lower expectations on the audio front.
It's less than $30 at 21stcentury and has all kinds of neat lighting options. You may want to not wait for your next camping trip to try out the "triangle light bar."
And for you Couch potatoes
A wind-up remote control may seem like the ultimate in a product that has no raison d'etre, given that you probably cannot remember the last time you changed the batteries in your remote! However, just in case you cannot stand the thought of the remote dying in the middle of your channel surf and being stuck with no new batteries at home, here's smarthome with just the ticket, the Universal Remote Control.
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