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.

Price

[Anonymous Coward]

For $120, I'd rather buy a couple regular power strips that would fit just as many, if not more power bricks, and have a bunch of money left over.

Re:Price

[orclevegam]

Or even better, buy a PowerSquid.

Re:Price

[Hadlock]

You can buy six regular strength surge protectors for the price of this. You'd have to be hit directly with lightning for the products plugged in to the 6th strip to get zapped. I always chain at least two anyways (Dallas area is prone to lightning 2-3 times a month year round, 1-2 times a week in late summer).

Re:Price

[Amouth]

and make sure you hide them.. we had some of thses (not these exactly but the same concept) and when the fire marshal came through for the yearly inspection he saw them and gave us a citation for having an extention cord pluged into a power strip and also gave us a citation for having a power strip pluged into an extetion cord.

apprently you are allowed to doit temporaily (liek using a drill or something) but you can't doit and have it sit

nor can you have a power strip pluged into another strip.. OR have a power strip pluged into a UPS or a UPS pluged into a power strip

we ended up going to walmart and getting some (very nice amazingly) 15' and 25' corded power strips.. for the second issue and then just added another strip running over for the first issue.

i still can't belive he fine'd us for that though..

Hasn't this been solved already?

[effigiate]

You can just buy one foot sections of "extension" cable that allow you to use all the outlets on your strip...plus they're cheap.

A makeshift fix at best

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

What we really need is standardized low voltage supplies, target devices and connectors. Then the "outlet" strip could have a single, high efficiency converter with multiple outputs.

Re:A makeshift fix at best

[Detritus]

Why? Low voltages are inefficient for power transmission. To provide well-regulated power to modern circuits, you need a voltage regulator that is physically close to the circuit. Pick up a modern motherboard and you will see one or more DC-DC converters used to power the CPU and other circuits.

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...

WAY too expensive

[d3ac0n]

Ok, 12 rotating power outlets and surge protection for $120.00 US....

Or I could just get 3 of these: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/81f6/

for less than that, still have surge protection, and get 3 MORE outlets to work with.

How the hell does this garbage rate Slashdot front page status?

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.

Power Squid = Better

[corsec67]

The Power Squid or PowerSquid Surge are better, since you can get the same amount of outlets for cheaper, and they can be plugged into larger wall-warts easier. Even better is that you can often get the Power Squid for free from ThinkGeek through the geekpoints program.

This /. advertisement is just silly, this isn't news, and is barely stuff that matters.

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: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.)

Good for high-end home use.

[loimprevisto]

I was a little skeptical about the price and capabilities of this thing, but a PDF from the manufacturer's website makes it look like a good deal, even at the price. The problem that I usually run into when looking for a surge strip/UPS with a lot of outlets is the total power the strip can handle. Many of the cheaper ones cap out around 1000VA or less, but it looks like this one will handle whatever you can draw without popping a standard residental 15A breaker:

Electrically, the T12 is rated at 1875 Watts, 125VAC/15A 60Hz. Its Surge Protector circuit covers all three "legs" of the AC line. With a voltage-spike protection of 6KV and a clamping voltage of 330V, the Surge Protector can dissipate 4320 joules of energy. Surge protection is also provided for the Telephone/Modem, Network and "F" connectors. To prevent unwanted EMI/RFI noise from entering connected equipment, the T12 is engineered with a wideband Line Filter that will reduce noise up to 58dB from 150KHz to 100MHz.

Comes with a $25k warranty for attached equipment too... I think I remember seeing APC strips with 100k coverage, but really- what do you plan on plugging into it that would make a difference?

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

Nothing New

[forceofyoda]

I bought one of these about 8 months ago. What's so great about this new one?

Cheapest alternative

[pauljlucas]

These 6-inch extension cords, while they not have grounded outlets, are just the right thing for all those gadget power bricks that have the plug coming right out of the brick (and most of those are non-grounded anyway).

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: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.