Office Depot Inc is promoting the Messenger Solar Charing Bag as one of the top picks for back-to-school, and featuring them prominently on displays near the entrance of stores.
he bag is a model from Voltaic designed to charge your devices without tying you to a power outlet.
The bag can plug into cell-phones, MP3 players, PDAs of different models and comes with a standard car charger adapter and 11 adapters for the most common models. Additional adapters can be found by Voltaic. A Li-ion battery in the bag stores any surplus power generated on those very sunny days and can be used for charging on rainy days.
Office Depot markets the bag as for “on-the-go students.â€
Voltaic is using a solar panel that is light weight, based on aluminum / plastic composite, waterproof, scratch resistant, and UV resistant. But it is not flexible, which gives limitation in the look and feel of bags.
This type of stiff solar panel might be OK for this Messenger Bag, it could give additional protection to your laptop computer inside if the Solar panel is as hard in tacking pumps as claimed.
It’s a great initiative from Office Depot to provide an alternative to the mainstream offerings for consumers with the Solar Messenger bag from Voltaic.
It is a great concept that Voltaic has in their larger product range. I just would like to see a softer integration of technology into Soft Goods (the term says it already).
Office Depot is selling the Solar Messenger Bag for $ 199.99 on their online store as well.
