Ever been stuck on a flight watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and wished you could whip out you’re laptop and download something else? Well Aircell, the founders of the largest in-flight Wi-Fi network are hoping that’s true, and are planning to launch a new video rental service later in the year to capitalize on that very idea.

Movies downloaded using the Aircell video service can be saved to any Windows PC and the renter has 24 hours to watch their purchase. The approach is similar to the iTunes model, but Aircell promises that the pricing will be competitive with Apple at $2 to $4 per TV show or movie, and presumably the file will be optimized for the limited bandwidth available in the air.

Surveys conducted by Aircell have suggested that a video on demand service would be popular with users who find most airlines entertainment options somewhat lacking. Unfortunately we still don't know if users will need to pay the $5-$13 Wi-Fi access fee in addition to the rental costs for the video, and clearly this will make or break it for most people. If you pay $10 for a 2 hour flight + $4 for a movie, that’s a $14 rental. It’s hard to imagine this would be the case, but you never know when it comes to the airlines these days.

Trying to get noticed at CES is a nearly impossible task, but the RCA Airnergy certainly caught my attention when I was sifting through the list of the most interesting devices I saw from the show floor. The idea behind the Airnergy is both fiendishly simple, and infinitely useful all at the same time. To put it simply, they are able to convert Wi-Fi signals into energy at a high enough efficiency level that you can actually use it to wirelessly charge your gadgets.

The technology can either be bundled into an external enclosure as shown above, or even integrated directly into a replacement battery for your phone. The external enclosure version charges up an internal battery whenever it finds a hotspot, and will discharge upon command to any USB powered device it is plugged into. Gizmodo claims it was able to charge a Blackberry Bold all the way from 30% to full power in less than 90 minutes using only Wi-Fi harvested energy.

So far so good right, but what about the price? RCA claims it will be available by the summer, and they are aiming at an MSRP of around $40 for the external enclosure version, and around $60 built into a replacement battery for your cell phone. Imagine a day when you can actually charge your laptop simply by surfing the web on a wireless network. They have a long way to go before they get that efficient, but its a pretty cool concept for mobile gadgets all the same.

Anyone else excited by this one? Check out the interview video below.

According to company chairman Joseph Hsu, MSI has big plans for 2010, primarily with its notebook and all-in-one PC business. Hsu said he expects shipments of the former to jump by 50 percent this year, while he expects to the latter to do the same, if not more.

Meeting those goals might not be too hard to do. MSI's notebook shipments took a serious hit by inventory issues in the first half of 2009, Hsu noted, leaving the company to play catch-up for the rest of the year. Even so, MSI's branded notebook shipments were still higher than those in 2008.

As 2010 rolls along, Hsu said consumers can expect more notebook models with varying specifications, rather than trying to achieve significant shipment volumes with just a handful of models.

Image Credit: MSI

Here's an interesting tidbit for those of you who can't devour enough Nexus One details. According to research firm iSuppli, Google's new smartphone consists of $174.15 worth of parts. This includes both inner (designed by Google) and outer (designed by HTC) components.

By comparison, would-be Nexus One owners are being asked to shell out $179 for the smartphone super phone when accompanied by a two-year T-Mobile service agreement, or $529 for the standalone phone. Not included in any of the price quotes? Manufacturing, packaging, software, and other related costs.

"Items like the durable unibody construction, the blazingly fast Snapdragon baseband processor, and the bright and sharp Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display all have been seen in previous phones, but never before combined into a single design," Kevin Keller, senior analyst for iSuppli, said in a statement.

As for the most expensive part of the Nexus One, that distinction belongs to the Snapdragon processor, which runs $30.50, or about 20 percent of the total cost. In second place is the 512MB of DDR memory ($20.40), followed by the Bluetooth/WLAN hardware ($8.20).

Image Credit: iSuppli