A fellow with a Macbook started to use my extension cord at the airport but found he brought the wrong charger. Oh, well. That’s probably why I have to travel with a “cables and chargers ditty” that takes up a quarter of my carry on and drives TSA scanners crazy.
Here’s the thing. I have three cell phones (yeah, yeah, two are out of service or about to be), an iPod, a PDA, two cameras, two laptops, and an electric razor. Really. Not one of them has the same plug at either end.
I don’t want a $39.95 “universal charger adapter” gizmo. I have a bunch of those. They work for some gadgets some of the time. I want to plug into one place with one cord with one end onnit.
Ya know, every alarm clock, desktop computer, electric tooth brush, monitor, refrigerator, table lamp, television, and bug zapper I own plugs into the same 120VAC receptacle.
There’s no reason all the 5-12VDC device makers can’t collude to do the same damn thing.
This is truly one of my super-peeves.
In fact, I was just bitching at my IT guy about this as he handed over my new Blackberry with yet another new charger. At forty bucks a pop, the cell phone companies must make ALL of their profit on these “peripherals.”
Grrrrr.
There is a move afoot among the personal electronics devices manufacturers to standardize. They all agree. A lot of them have settled on the “micro-USB” adapter for power. One of them insists on this sort of proprietary power-and-data gizmo that is backwards compatible with the iPod “classic”, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, the iPad … And there’re a few who want to standardize on a connector that looks suspiciously like a micro-USB, but isn’t.
So those are the small device guys. The laptop/notebook guys are not quite on board with all that.
So I standardized, instead. Or, rather, am on my way to standardizing. I no longer have to carry a camera, a GPS, a PDA, an e-book, a music player, a cellphone, or an electric razor. I have one whatsit that does all of that except the shaving part. For shaving, I use Dick’s razor and make him carry it.
I also have a netbook and a Macbook. No longer carry the Macbook and once a decent tablet comes out, I’ll dump the netbook and be down to two devices that use micro-USB and Dick’s razor. And I’ll still let him carry that.
‘course, I’ll need all kinds of cute cases and bags and screen protectors that go with all my sh00z and darling, darling outfits …
No wonder my razor has been pulling out the hairs.
I carry two cameras in addition to the one in my phone, but I AM, after all, a photographer. Both cameras can charge on a mini-USB cable but it is slow and far mor convenient to pop the proprietary batteries into the proprietary chargers I also have to carry. The GPS generally stays in my car or truck. I’ve for the moment combined my PDA and music player but it has that proprietary white charging cable that fits nothing else I own. I’m down to one cellphone that has a micro(?) USB that doesn’t match Anne’s charger or, I think, yours. I don’t own an e-book reader.
Being a nudist means I never have to carry as many clothes.
Imagine the turmoil if standard copy/printer paper were not 8.5 X 11. Or if home use toilet paper came in different width rolls. Or if A, AA, AAA, C and D cell batteries were of varied lengths. About a century ago the plumbing industry standarized toilet tank fixtures/innards — hence the tradename, I’m told, of *American Standard*. Haven’t tried to verify that, but it sounds good.
— George