I can't believe this article didn't mention the Palm Pre, which has had inductive charging using its touchstone since it launched last June.

I'd settle for a USB port on everything, I can pick up a powered USB hub for peanuts and it won't be as inefficient as inductive charging.

@author

Geez Clive, how long did you work on that first sentence?

Yup, it's true, but I think you should really be asking how many are turned on, and how many dinner plates I own! :-)

Please do the world a favor and turn the computers off!

"I have more PCs than dining room plates", really is this true? get some virtualisation.

"I'll agree with you about SKY+ though, my brother has it and I wince whenever I have to use it."
Dont use it, stop wincing. In the UK you cant get the SKY chanels without the sky box!

Well someone like me was a very early adopter of hard disk video recording. These days I have a Media Centre machine and a dedicated Humax box. I'll agree with you about SKY+ though, my brother has it and I wince whenever I have to use it.

Just in case you hadn't noticed, this is a techie website, so odds are I would be a techie, and I am. I have more PCs than dining room plates and a Cat 5 wired house. I am not your grandfather! Yet I still don't have a major problem needing a powermat style solution, especially at those prices!

If you really want to stop me getting tangled up in wires, how about inventing a wireless gigabit ethernet?

Quite a few years ago before a trip abroad I bought a USB charging kit which included connectors for pretty much anything I could think of. It also included a mains wallwart with a USB 5v on the top plus a car cigar lighter to USB 5v adapter. It charges everything I own bar the laptop (Which is probably beyond the current capabilities of the powermat anyway).

It's small, compact, takes zero desk space and costs very little, and of course is more efficient because it uses those old solid conductor things.

The only place I would think the inductive solution would be beneficial is for cordless mice, make the Powermat a mouse mat and Bobs your father's brother.

It would be nice to get home and plop the mobile phone on the stand next to the kitchen table (letting it recharge automatically), sit down on the couch and plop the laptop on the living room table (getting it to grab its current from said table), and use either one at leisure.
If this tech evolves favorably, we might even be able to image TCP over magnetic induction, which would allow you to plop the external drive down on the same table and bingo! it connect to the laptop without a hitch, and without a cable.
Same for what is currently called a USB drive. Just plonk it on the table and your laptop detects it and can work with it.
Appliance paradise.

But I'm dreaming, aren't I ?

Niel: Have you ever heard of those charging stations with the power strip inside? You plug all your wall warts inside, and cables go out little holes in the front or back, and you put all the devices on top. Works great with our 2 cell phones and DS Lites.

Inductive charging = wasted electricity.

Do you expect people will go out and buy 3-gadget mats and then look for gadgets to charge on them, and phone makers will simply stop bundling wall warts, expecting consumers already have the mats? Unlikely. If the gadget manufacturers have to bundle wall warts 'just in case', why bother adding the mat option as well?

DVD offered a better picture than VHS, and major convience in no need to rewind, but other major advantages were (1) less expensive to make and took up less store shelf space, and (2) more opportunity for DRM. The big advantages that DVD had for retailers and movie studios, caused them to really push DVD - in so far as they just plain stopped selling popular new releases on VHS even though they could have squeezed a bit more blood out of that stone.

On the other hand, is this tech really 'better' for Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint and T-Moble, etc?

The phone companies will have to bundle either a wall wart or a mat with the phone, because if someone doesn't already own a mat they will need one. You can bet that wall warts will be less expensive for a while, and that means that the charging mat option (with whatever modification will be made to the phone) will be an added feature (read: costs more) or only available on "select models". So everyone will have a bunch of little mats for single appliances, and eventually buy a bigger one to reduce clutter. That seems like a lousy adoption model.

Strikes me that convincing someone like you of the benefits of inductive charging is akin to explaining the benefits of a PVR to a VCR owner when TiVo had just launched. Nowadays everyone understands why a TiVo (or in the UK, it's third-rate alternative Sky+) is so much better than a VCR and why it's a no-brainer when buying a hard-disk based PVR in place of a cassette based VCR.

Same with inductive charging: I think most will only understand the benefits (mainly convenience, also a single charging mat for any number of devices, and no cables except for the mat itself) once they have got past the stage you are at right now, where you think your current VCR (ie. cables) do a fine job.

Just as it's difficult to buy a VCR these days, once all mobile device manufacturers support inductive charging out of the box it may well prove difficult to track down a standard USB wall charger.

Sorry, I didn't realise that I was a bedevil mobile user...

This really does strike me as a product with very little market... I have one mobile phone, and even if I added an MP3 player (which I don't, because the phone does that) both those chargers would still be smaller and easier to carry than a damn great big expensive powermat thing.

Not that I would as most devices now charge from USB these days, so a couple of cables thrown in the laptop bag do the job for me. I do this so much I've got no idea where the phone's wall-wart charger is anymore!

Last problem, but by no means least, how does a powermat charger work in a car environment? Place the mat on the passenger seat and watch the phone repeatedly fly off into the door bin and footwell?