The Better Mousetrap?

[Magus]

Just bought one of those cheap media player things so I can watch pc movie files on my TV. It's made in China. It has a remote that is half the size of a normal remote, has all the same type of buttons, and seems to have the same range.

It runs on a watch battery.

See this truly shows America is no longer the leading technological power, or if this is actually an American company (Micca), it took until now to come up with this. If you knew how many damn AA and AAA batteries I've bought over the years for all the damn remotes, using multiple ones for each of them, usually replacing them at least once a year, costing me dozens of dollars...and each remote could have run off a watch battery that probably costs about 5 dollars and would probably run for about ten years, if my watch is any measure of it (and yes, it has indiglo. I don't think the power drain for a remote can be any higher!)

Sure, I could get rechargeable batteries, but they cost more, like ten bucks for the charger alone. Clearly the remote control companies are in cahoots with the battery companies to rob of us of our hard-earned dough!

...oh, and the media player is pretty nice, I guess. It's probably chinsy and cheap or whatever, I'm sure the remote is too. BUT one could make a high quality remote that runs off a watch battery. BUT NO ONE THOUGHT TO.

So, any other examples of "better mousetrap" ideas you've discovered or even thought of yourself? Can we solve the energy crisis in some simple manner? Data storage? World hunger? Think hard.