New Power Adapter Fixes Space Issues

Tributaries has just announced a solution to all or your oversized power adapter woes. The new T12 power strip features 12 different outlets and eight of them are located on the edge and can be rotated by as much as 90 degrees. The adapter also provides surge protection for RJ-11, RJ-45, and Coax if you so desire.

Comments

Why

[ZoneManSPW]

Why is a press release "stuff that matters?"

Re:Why

[inviolet]

Why is a press release "stuff that matters?"

Slashdot ad revenues are down, perhaps?

Among geeks like us, product placements in a 'sacred' forum like Slashdot are a Big Deal. I recently bought a very nice smart battery charger from Thompson based on the (modded +5) recommendation of another poster. And I'm so thrilled with it, I bought more of them to give as Christmas gifts. At least for now, my brain assigns Slashdot items an automatic above-average level of trust.

Hence the pressure to grab the headlines. In a clean place like this, full of honest doves and few free-riding hawks, the payoff for becoming a hawk is huge.

Re:pretty good deal

[njfuzzy]

Isn't that a bit like "other than the time it takes, that's very fast"? (I'm assuming that Value = Quality / Price and Rate = Distance / Time.)

I don't like it

[jandrese]

The thing is overpriced and it won't work as advertised. Look at your big wall wart, it is considerably wider than the plug and usually hangs out below the ground plug on the bottom. Look how close together those side plugs are. You would think the operative mode would be to alternate between top and side to plug in the most, but if you have them turned all the way down to the side then the wall wart will smack on the floor (causing the whole strip to rest at an angle).

From what I see this strip won't be able to handle more than 5 oversized wall warts (two on each side, one on the top) without interfering with other plugs, which is not something I'd spend $120 on.

Frankly, the plugs look rather jammed together on there. I have some power strips like that were even regular three prong plugs occasionally have problems (some manufacturers go crazy on the plastic around the plugs).

For the next version of this strip, I suggest a few changes:

1. Forget this rotating stuff, just space the plugs out on the top and put two of them on each side.
2. Spread the plugs out a bit more
3. Drop the price by half, or let Monster rebrand your equipment

Re:WAY too expensive

[plague3106]

Not really. 540J vs. 4320J. The squid is a neat idea, but its eight times LESS effective than this one.

Re:Power Squid = Better

[HTH NE1]

If this were an advertisement, why wouldn't it be for the powersquid? Hmm...

from the for-those-who-didn't-like-the-clutter-of-the-squid dept.

Re:What's in it for then uncooperative companies?

[swm]

Wall warts are driven by the fact that UL ignores anything under 30 volts.

If your product plugs directly into the wall, then it's a 120V device, and you have to get it UL approved, which costs $$$.

Instead, you buy a wall wart.
The wall wart is 120V, but the wall wart vendor already got it UL approved.
Now your device is low voltage, and you don't need UL approval.

This is a true, global economic saving, because the single UL approval for the wall wart saves the cost of UL approval for every product that uses it.

Wall warts inconvenience consumers, because they block adjacent outlets on power strips, but few consumers make purchase decisions based on wall wart form factor, so there isn't much market pressure on vendors to deal with this problem.

Re:A makeshift fix at best

[lexarius]

It's not necessarily for everything. When I look at my powerstrip jungle, I see that the only AC cables running into a device belong to the workstations and monitors. Everything else (which is most of it) is a mess of bricks and giant plugs. If those devices were standardized, one brick could service all of them. Or have a couple categories with different plug shapes for 5, 12, or other voltages. These devices don't have their converters physically close to their circuitry to begin with, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Re:A makeshift fix at best

[Applekid]

Who's using their home wiring to transmit power across any relevant distances? I don't think GP is referring to replacing AC with DC, just separating the two without a collection of bulky black boxes. I've got more than just a handful of wall warts on my various power strips. 70% of mine deliver 5 volts down cablinb 6 feet or less to a proprietary adapter for my phone or router or cable box or fax machine etc etc etc.

It's pretty inefficient to have the same type of circuitry replicated time and time again when it could be at least consolidated a little. If there was a uniform standard for the tail ends of those cables, all intercompatible for different voltages (like keying the plug to keep accidents from happening), then this AC-DC conversion could happen right on the powerstrip level.

I have a dream of a four conductor GND/5/9/12 DC volt cable that one day will directly connect a streamlined powersupply built-in to a "room power strip" with a device that could mix and match those lines to get whatever voltage they need: 5, 9, 12 (obviously) plus 3, 4, and 7 by being a marginally clever - one day right here on Earth little black routers and black force feedback joysticks will be able to use the same cables as little white cellphones and white battery chargers as sisters and brothers.

Re:A makeshift fix at best

[immcintosh]

I don't know about you, but when I count the number of wall warts I have sticking out all over the place, most of them are for little things like desk lamps and power chargers (laptop, phone, PSP, etc...). These would all work perfectly well on a standardized low voltage supply as far as I'm aware, and I for one think it's a great idea. Not every cable is powering a motherboard...

Re:What's in it for then uncooperative companies?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Wall warts also allow product designers to accommodate regional variations in voltage/frequency/receptacle format by simply shipping the appropriate wallwart for the destination country. Avoids the problems with different power transformers, fuses, and cordsets for different countries.