Slashdot Mirror
There Oughta Be a Standard: Laptop Power Supplies
Esther Schindler writes "Every mobile device you own has its own power supply and its own proprietary plug. There oughta be a better way, says Alfred Poor. Fortunately, he reports, the IEEE is coming to the rescue. "Their Universal Power Adapter for Mobile Devices (UPAMD) Working Group is developing a new standard that will not just address the needs of laptops and tablets, but will be intended to work with just about any electronics device that required between 10 and 240 watts of power," Poor writes. It's about darned time." If there's one thing I wish for all laptop power supplies, it's that they would license from Apple (or work around, patent-wise) the magnet attachment system that makes cable-tripping far less dangerous to man or beast, compared to a few years ago.
It should be cheaper. It opens the door for manufacturers to provide a laptop without a power supply, and opens a 3rd party market for separate power bricks at competitive prices.
My wife used to knock over her iBook all the time. When we got a dog, it fell off the coffee table twice as often. We replaced it with a MacBook some time back, and it's only hit the ground once in like five years. With a kid having been added to the mix since then, that number would have been a lot worse without the magnetic plug.
Of course, the kid has come pretty close to doing some other things. He went through a phase of being fascinated by watching water pour over different things.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I could imagine that efficiency will improve. Right now, a laptop manufacturer that includes their own power brick has not much incentive to make it really efficient. It's easier just to make a bigger one with a cheaper design.
With a standard connector, there will be 3rd party vendors that offer standard bricks, and some vendors will aim for the highest efficiency as a selling point.
I really liked the MagSafe(tm) concept when Apple first came out with it, but Apple has been such a fucking prick about the damned things. They don't offer any significant range of options to use the plug, and they actively stymie all attempts of the marketplace to fill that void. Want a piggy-back battery to supply power to the laptop? Apple doesn't make one. Want to tie in with a docking station? Apple doesn't make one. At first, when asked about third party adoption of the plugs, they were "oh, well, I guess they'll start coming out any time now." Then it was "oh, well, guess nobody's trying to license them." Then when manufacturers tried to license them, they were refused. So one manufacturer decided to eat the waste and rely on the doctrine of First Sale. They BOUGHT Apple(tm) adapters, chopped off the white wallwart transformer, and soldered the MagSafe(tm) pigtail to their own battery packs, and they were still attacked by Apple's lawyers. WTF, Apple. People have varying needs to make use of your products. Step up to offer the solution, or get out of the way.
[
...and this is why we need patent reform, but in the form of accepting fewer patents and for a shorter period of time.
Look, it isn't as though Apple has gained nothing from their "innovation" (assuming they actually invented it) of this magnetic plug. But having this as yet another thing which only works on Macs, which everyone else is legally forbidden from adding with or without Apple's help...
I want to make a case for how harmful this is to inventors, or even everyday coders. It's pretty much impossible now to do any software development without infringing on patents, and even if you somehow manage not to, it's impossible to know without your own legal army to research it.
Instead, I'm going to make a simpler, easier case: I want a laptop which is not a Mac (never had Linux run well on a Mac, I don't like OS X, and I don't really want to pay the premium), but I want it to have that kind of power cord. Call it a "sense of entitlement" if you like, but this isn't just me being cheap -- I want that power cord, with a machine that runs Linux and Win7 reasonably well, and there's no technological reason I can't have that, not even anything like DRM in the way, just raw legal force.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Make it symmetrical, and make them test it with a sight impaired person. USB dropped the ball on this big-time.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Yes. I too enjoy redesigning workspaces to meet the design limitations of gadgets.
My MacBook Pro is powered by my ego. It's been four years without needing a single charge.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You obviously know nothing about modern electronics. 78xx chips are linear regulators, and no one uses those any more because they're so inefficient. Every small electronic device now uses switching power supplies, not only to save power but to reduce heat, which is important for something sitting in your lap. The idea of a laptop computer using linear supplies is utterly laughable.
Then you could just plug your laptop into it's own USB port and you're all set!
That would be cool, I could power my laptop from its own USB port while I am busy copying my mp3s onto itself via USB! It has to work with USB2, though, because the volume of stuff I have to copy is too large and would take longer that one charging cycle otherwise.
Of course, I could always just turn the volume down and get done copying faster. I should have thought of that before.