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What To Do With All of My Gadget Chargers?
legoman666 writes "On my desk I have chargers for the following gadgets: Nokia N810, LG Chocolate, Sony Ericcson Z310a, Canon Powershot SD1000, Cowan iAudio X5L, Lenovo Thinkpad, Logitech MX1000 and my Nintendo DS. Not a single pair of them share a similar connector. I have two power strips whose singular purpose is to energize these chargers. My question to Slashdot is: How do you organize all of your different chargers? Please, share your secrets."
You don't need all those gadgets, and you would save your self a lot of money in the future.
Or stuff that matters? I'm trying to figure out which this falls under, because it doesn't look like it's remotely close to either of them.
Pack them all away and get USB charging cables for them all. Much easier and takes up much less space.
I have to agree. How did this make the homepage? Shouldn't this go in Slashdot Idle?
It does raise a serious issue of why the flying fuck in the sky don't gadgets simply have the same bloody connectors for charging? There's no excuse! If all manufacturers could agree on the USB standard then why can't they make a charger standard?
Use a power strip with switches on each output, then only switch on the ones you want.
What sort of answer are you expecting?
- I chop off all the connectors from my expensive, official chargers and solder them to cheap multi-level adaptors?
- I bought X, a thing which includes connectors for everything and lets you charge Watts of equipment simultaneously?
- I run DC electric around my house in multi-voltage and have purchased specific connectors for every piece of equipment I own and hope I don't plug my phone into the wrong voltage?
I don't think that there is a sensible solution at the moment. I tend to have a charging area - where I keep all the chargers on a power strip which is plugged in whenever I need to charge anything. My wife and I often want to charge two similar items at the same time - for those cases I purchase an extra charger (usually from eBay or a boot sale) or use one mains charger and plug the supplied car-charger into a 220-12v adaptor I bought that has a "cigarette lighter" socket on it.
The other options don't really bear thinking about. Running DC electric around a house is an absolute nightmare so you're basically going to want to lump all the things needing charge near a suitable DC output - which could be the official chargers on a powerstrip, or a multi-voltage thing, like a PC PSU or similar multi-out DC supply if you have THAT many but I'd check the efficiency of using such a thing when a single mobile phone is plugged into it.
So you have to have all your charging equipment in one place, and you can either rig up some Heath Robinson solution to charge any peripheral with any connector via any voltage or you could just plug the mains adaptors that you already have into a £2.99 power strip. You can neaten it up by hiding the actual blocks out of site and rigging up a bit of polished wood that can hold all the various gadgets with the right connectors already in place through holes on it. But that's just poncing about.
You don't save much by doing anything different - in fact, the exact opposite when something goes wrong or doesn't work first time. Forget the whiners moaning about the power used by extra PSU's on the strips - plug in an energy monitor while they are all idle if you are that worried, but the easiest solution is "plug them all in when something is charging, take them all out when nothing is", which is facilitated by an amazing invention called the main switch on a power strip.
There is no magic solution. Even "wireless charging" is bound to be the same in 100 years - every bloody manufacturer will use a different field strength, frequency, polarisation etc. so that you have to buy their charger. Until someone (ISO, I'm looking at you) actually standardises on a DC supply to a house and countries enforce its use in law, you're stuck with it. The only DC standard I'm aware of is in cars and that actually WORKS to a degree - a car charger is a car charger and will work in basically every car in the world (24v supplies on lorries not included, but they do usually come with rather large warnings on the dash and you can get 24-12v convertors for just such an occasion).
He's only got 2 mobile phones - the Nokia N810 is an Internet Tablet. I'm never seen anywhere without mine. It's a geek thing...
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
And you are more than happy to buy one locking you to a specific manufacturer for $19.99. Same reason the headsets are all different.
The manufacturers are simply giving you what you ask for. YOU are the problem.
Deleted
Dump it all for an iPhone ... yeah right !!!
Just because you are willing to compromise on everything doesn't mean the rest of us should ...
Nokia N810 = 800 x 480 display
iPhone = 320 x 480 display (FAIL)
Canon Powershot SD1000 = 7.1 megapix
iPhone = 2 megapix (FAIL)
Cowan iAudio X5L = 30GB storage
iPhone = 4GB or 8GB (FAIL)
Lenovo Thinkpad = erm, it's a Laptop
iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
Logitech MX1000 = erm, it's a Mouse
iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
Nintendo DS = erm, it's a good little games console
iPhone = erm, it's NOT (FAIL)
To be honest, I can't think of a single, sensible reason to buy an iPhone. It is jack of all trades and master of none.
I said keep the laptop, did I not? Reading for comprehension: FAIL
Besides, I ALWAYS have my iPhone with me. And it can, to some extent, and in most cases to the extent necessary, stand in for all of those other things.
You on the other hand, may or may not, depending on whether or not you loaded up your Batman utility belt that morning, be carrying the LG, the Nokia, the Ericcson, the Canon, the Cowan, or the Nintendo. Nor, given the subject of the post, will you be totally certain that any or all of them are charged up and ready to go. (BTW, you forgot to mention the book reader/Kindle, GPS/Magellen, ...., ah, never mind.)
From my perspective, having the perfect dedicated device for each and every function does me no good whatsoever when it's sitting on the shelf at home because I didn't feel like being an electronic pack mule that day.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Simple.
Chuck all the stupid crap toys you have that use proprietary connectors.
I have made a decision: In the small electronics area, I will ONLY buy devices that use the mini-USB style connectors. I flatly refuse to buy anything that cannot be charged or connected via USB to my PC, or a USB base station.
Yes, this does mean that I will miss out on some "hot" tech items. For example, I do not have an iPhone. Why? Not because I think it's a bad device or because I cannot afford it. I think iPhones are very nice and I can certainly afford to buy one. I don't have an iPhone because it uses a 30 pin proprietary dock connector. The means that I would have to buy all sorts of expensive connecting devices from Apple that I have no intention of spending money on like a moron.
The same goes with most other phones. I selected my Motorazr cell phone because I can charge it with a USB connector. I selected my Creative Zen MP3 player because I can charge it with a USB connector (the same one I charge my phone with) Should the need for any other small devices come along, I will select the one I can recharge with a USB connector. If no devices have that option, I will forgo the device altogether. NO device is so important that I should have to clutter my life with useless connectors and chargers, when a simple mini usb 2.0 connector will do everything these idiotic proprietary connectors will do AND MORE.
It's time we as consumers put our feet down. Manufacturers need to stop trying to follow the "give away the razor handle and sell the blades at a 500% markup" model and start selling their devices, unlocked, with a standard unified connector at a reasonable price.
It starts with each one of us deciding to change this one thing in our lives by only buying devices with USB connectors. I have made the change, who will join me?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
The iPhone comes with a cable to connect its 30 pin proprietary dock with USB. It charges over USB.
While there may have been some fuzzy statements in there, if you reread the beginning of the post you were replying to you'll notice that he said that he'll "ONLY buy devices that use the mini-USB style connectors," and that he selected his ZEN mp3 player because of the fact that it will charge with the same style cable as his phone.
I don't believe that a cable that simply plugs into a USB jack but still takes a proprietary adapter to enable it to do so would conform to his quite narrow standards.
but we should make the best of this question, because it is a good one.
Only recently have manufacturers jumped on a bandwagon. Many cell manufacturers are providing mini-usb connectors for charging and sync. With the recent addition of the new USB (3?) offering higher output voltages, we may see more manufacturers moving to a common charging system.
There are, of course, several manufacturers that require proprietary connectors or needle barrel plugs who should be encouraged to change to a standardized connector.
With the possibility of a common connector on the horizon, we may see the exact opposite of this post in the future. "I can't plug all of my devices in because I don't have enough USB ports" or "I can't find additional USB cables because they're so popular that the stores are sold out"
OK, so the latter will probably never happen, but I frequently run out of USB ports and have to make a decision about what gets unplugged.
"Lame" - Galaxar
How about other types of connectivity you might want on a device? In addition to USB, my iPod photo also provides S-video out (maybe composite as well; I know composite video is available through the headphone jack), audio in/out, control (for things like car stereo connectivity), and FireWire. My Treo puts RS-232, audio in/out, and some other signals on its connector. On a larger device, you might get away with including all of the appropriate connectors somewhere on the device. For something like an iPod or a phone (at least one that's not just a phone)? Not so much.
FWIW, I tend to charge most of my stuff by plugging into a USB port on a computer, a USB hub, or a cigarette-lighter-to-USB adapter. Standardizing one end of the connection on something that's small and ubiquitous isn't a bad idea. Insisting on doing the same with the other end of the connection, though, is unnecessarily limiting in terms of what you can do with it. I'd like to see you try driving a projector with the mini-USB port on your Zen for a slideshow. I've run several from my iPod.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.