Converged devices
Something recently reminded me of the silliest converged device I've seen.
It's after hurricane Wilma and I'm standing in line to buy a generator. They don't have any, but we are standing in line in hopes that generators will show up. We're all hungry for news and a guy volunteers that he has a portable TV. He pulls out of his backpack a misshappen hunk of plastic with a built-in TV, radio, flashlight and reading light (a fluorescent lightbulb). It's roughly the size of a toaster. There's knobs, buttons, and compartments all over the thing. He turns a knob and various lights and sounds emit but no TV. He says it must be the battery. I said but the other functions work. He replies, "oh no, each function has its own set of batteries. I just can never remember which set of batteries go with with which function". He pulls out a large bag of different batteries and starts going through the compartments on the device. It had a nine volt battery for the radio, D cells, double A's and C cells. The manufacturer had literally crammed the design for 4 separate devices into one block of plastic.