Beanzawave!! Amazing or terrifying? You decide…

No more prepacked sandwiches; no more cold cups of tea; no reason to forfeit all kinds of treats cos your boss has you shackled to the desk working through lunch. The appetizingly-named Beanzawave mini microwave plugs right into your USB port, so even if you are confined to the computer, there’s no need to forfeit gastronomical delight.

Or maybe that’s pushing it. Microwaves have often been maligned for their less-than-wholesome culinary value, and while we are hardly luddites here at BBT, are we being squeamish little girls when we recoil from this one?

It’s not just that a desktop microwave is kind of gross – you know that tikka masala odour wafting over the copier will linger for hours – but the actual technology behind this, the world’s smallest portable microwave, is a little freaky.
Developed by Gama Microwave Technology with and for convenience-food giants Heinz, the Beanzawave is designed to heat pre-packed “snack pots” and could be a welcome addition to camping & outdoor sporting kit.

The heat is generated not by simple transference via the USB – which isn’t powerful enough to generate true microwaves – but rather from telephony waves. To break it down: you’re on your mobile phone for a while, without a headset, you get a hot ear and a headache, right? THAT is what’s being harnessed to cook your dinner. Still hungry?

And as if that’s not enough to put you off, the proposed price tag of $150 made us balk too. Oh well, it’s still in prototype stages, so who knows whether this extraneous little number will remain a novelty, or perhaps become an indispensable feature of your desktop. Just remember to take your beans out of the can first, yeah?