Anyone who’s owned an Xbox of any stripe knows about giant power supplies. But with the advent of the NUC and its various competitors, it will be interesting to see what people come up with for low-wattage PSUs in the next few years. A bit of quick poking around reveals a particularly interesting tidbit from this year’s CES:
Though capable of providing 65 watts of juice, the FINsix is just slightly larger than the average cell phone charger and weighs only a few ounces. The adapter will be compatible with most modern laptops, including the 2013 MacBook Air and 2013 MacBook Pro.
[…]
The secret to the adapter is new technology that can cycle power up to 1,000 times faster than a typical laptop power brick. Cycling more quickly means less power must be stored in the adapter to ensure smooth operation, and that keeps the size down. Though this may seem a simple innovation, developing it took the company’s co-founder Anthony Sagneri, who holds a doctorate from MIT, several years.
In general I’d expect this to be an area of rapid innovation for the next few years. I’m fairly sure there’ll be tension between wireless power everywhere and this kind of PSU miniaturization; either way things will get less cord-connected, which I’d consider an excellent start on the problem.