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Standardized Laptop Charger Approved By IEC
Sockatume writes "The IEC, the standards body which wrote the phone charger specification used in the EU, has approved a standardised laptop charger. While the 'DC Power Supply for Portable Personal Computer' doesn't have a legal mandate behind it, the IEC is still optimistic that it will lead to a reduction in electronics waste and make it easier to find a replacement charger. Unfortunately the technical documentation does not seem to be available yet, but previous comments indicate that it will be a barrel plug of some kind." I wish they'd push a yank-resistant and positive-connecting plug along the lines of Apple's MagSafe.
On a magnetic yank resistant plug
You can't use MagSafe because it's an Apple innovation. It took a major stroke of genius to put a fryer plug on a laptop.
Hopefully the source article won't be quietly edited after-the-fact so that I look like a raging moron, as happened with my last submission. :/
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"I wish they'd push a yank-resistant and positive-connecting plug along the lines of Apple's MagSafe."
So would Apple since they have a patent on the MagSafe design. I suspect it would be quite the patent windfall.
Seriously, stop this antiquated shit.
Dell, HP, Alienware and other company will do anything in their power to not comply with this standard. This means less chance to get money out of customers pockets. Most companies, and I point DELL this time, uses a very much different exagonal type of connection which makes universal adapters a pain in the ass to find while others like HP and other old Dell laptops are usually easy to find and replace at a very cheap price. When it's not possible, you have to call the company to get a remplacement charger for a high enough price. But I would love to see a standard in this as it would make my job much easier
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Just in time for laptop obsolescence.
Well, let's see.
USB can deliver 2.5W. My big old luggable W510 has an adapter rated for (checks) holy crap 135W. To keep things standard we could charge it with 54 parallel USB cables, since things seem to be standardising on USB these days and multiple plugs where necessary.
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Everyone here chides Apple for putting a deep fryer plug on a laptop and get a patent for it. Truth is, if they don't, someone else will and sue the heck out of them for it. If it was so obvious, why haven't anyone thought about it before Apple?
It's better if they can convince Apple to put up the MagSafe patent as FRAND. It'll be a bad joke if Apple has to include a MagSafe-to-whatever adapter with their MacBooks
One problem with this is that some laptops take much more juice to run than others. So will the standard charger have to be powerful enough to feed the biggest laptop or will we get a range of, say, 3 -- which would be a good advance on what we have today if the same plug was used, so the most powerful PSU could be used with a light laptop, as long as a light PSU had a cutout to protect it from overload?
The specifications are protected from download by a password, so I can't check :-(
I doubt that the likes of Apple would adopt this.
Strongly agree about safe-disconnect connectors. I think my next laptop will probably be a MacBook, even though I'll just strip MacOS off and put Linux on, simply because of MagSafe. I've wrecked two laptops, one from tripping over the charger cable, and one from it falling of the arm of a chair and landing on the charger connection. Both times, it resulted in motherboard damage.
OK, you can say I'm clumsy - but laptops are designed to be used on the move.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
You know they're going to fumble the ball. They're going to call for the old barrel charger.... the design flaw that has sent more of my hardware to the eGrave than any other. I can't tell you the number of laptops I've had to pitch because I wasn't shelling out 800 dollars to repair a laptop when I could buy something with roughly the same specs for a couple hundred more and actually have a warranty again.
MagSafe is great. Thank God someone out there had enough of that ancient technology. Cry about Apple all you want but they did it when no one else would take the initiative.
The minute you standardize, the standards organization then tries to make or suggests it should be compulsory.
That often restricts innovation in many ways. It is one thing to have standards for connection and interface whether electronic or mechanical, but to try to standardize a whole "charger" ignores what is going on now with resonance charging, even lower power circuits, solar boosting, etc.
They could cut down the number of leads by a factor of six if they used some sort of heavy-duty twisted-pair conductor. Then you'd have a Cat-5 of Nine Tails.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Apple's MagSafe connector is the opposite of yank-resistant. It can be yanked out more easily than any other connector I've ever seen.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Out of two similar netbooks, they use the same supply. But out of the ten or twelve different laptops I've owned over the years, these are literally the only ones. no, wait, I take that back. I sent back an HP EliteBook and got back a different HP EliteBook that took the same supply, but I never would have bought another machine from HP. It was a replacement. Does it count?
On the plus side, you can use those power supplies to drive LED modules, which are often available in the same voltages for some reason. I don't know if it's coincidence or not; I suspect not but have no proof.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Apple's magsafe always falls out for me. If they are the pinnacle of design then that tech is not worth it.
-]Phreak Out[-
Why is the Micro-USB turned one way on my Samsung and another on my Nexus units? Fix that first.
Apple will have to change their connector. Which is shit anyway because... you know... magnets around computers and all.
If I had a dollar for every broken power jack I have seen and/or replaced, I would buy Apple's MagSafe patent. Seriously though, it will probably be something that will vary in quality depending on the manufacturer. I just hope they all adopt it so we don't have to deal with this mess anymore.
It is raging piles of BS that laptop makers get away with the random charger and random voltage BS they have been pulling over the past 20 years. I really hope they swing a hard hammer with this one and demand that no laptop can be sold in the EU without this connector and using a standard power supply (I.E. 85 watts 17.31624 volts)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Here we go again:
http://xkcd.com/927
"I wish they'd push a yank-resistant and positive-connecting plug"
;-)
How is it better making it harder for US citizens, even if they do make great friends?
Garry Knight
Yes, laptops won't be as cable intensive, but I see these things multiplying over the years.
We could hope that, if such a standard is adopted, the universal laptop bricks would be sold separately, and you'd only buy one if you didn't already have one.
And yeah, it's high time we started doing that with the PC/monitor power cables as well. Almost every computer owner has at least an extra half dozen of them. There's no reason for manufacturers to include something that's been standard forever. I'm surprised it hasn't already been done for the cost savings.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
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When a musical artist wants to perform a cover of a copyrighted song (which means pretty much *any* song), there is a fixed, comparatively small charge paid to a clearing house. Why is the licensing for a patent like MagSafe so variable and expensive by negotiation with each licensee? We pay the USB and SD and Microsoft and all kinds of other consortia taxes for their standards, whether buried in the connector cost or explicitly in other ways, and in exchange we get the benefits of interoperability. Plus if this is a safety standard on all portable equipment (presumably to be expanded for power+comm at some point), pennies per connector would still make lots of money for Apple without burdening anyone else.
Does anyone have an IEC login to share so I can actually look at the standard?
My company issues Dell laptops, and in the years I've been here I've been issued three as the old ones go out of service. As a result, and because I like to have chargers at home and at work, I've ended up with a fair number of chargers. I've noticed, though, that my most recent laptop won't charge when connected to the previous two model's chargers, despite being the same voltage and current. It'll pop up an error something like "this is not a Dell charger. The laptop will operate but the battery will not charge". I'm guessing some kind of DRM mechanism in the charger itself.
Assuming that for the sake of argument, specifying a common connector, voltage and current isn't going to do a whole lot of good if the charger and laptop have circuitry that must validly handshake before charging occurs. Unless they're going to tackle that issue also.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And yeah, it's high time we started doing that with the PC/monitor power cables as well. Almost every computer owner has at least an extra half dozen of them. There's no reason for manufacturers to include something that's been standard forever. I'm surprised it hasn't already been done for the cost savings.
What's the cost savings? $1? What's the cost? 10 - 50% of your customers losing their shit when they can't plug in their new PC/monitor and complaining to the retailer, calling the manufacturers support line, and/or leaving bad reviews online. Yeah, I wonder why they don't do that.
Holy crap. That would make me leery about using really cheap cables.
I run a custom cable manufacturing company (seriously, I really do) and I can make you a USB cable with whatever gauge wire you want. Won't be cheap but it will be robust. :-) A typical USB cable has two 24awg wires for power and the rest are 28awg or sometimes 26awg.
I'd love it if they would make it so your laptop would at least run on 12V-30V so you don't have to buy an expensive power supply to plug it into your car or truck. I don't care if it doesn't charge at full rate if plugged in to a car, but at least run.
A lot of modern ones seem to be more or less interchangeable. My last two laptops are both 19.5V and fit each other, and a friend recently left his charger at home. The voltages match, the plug fit, and he used mine with no problem.
Yep, my Dell charger has an easily disconnected connector a few inches from the barrel that plugs into the laptop. Yank the cord, and this connector parts, leaving the laptop on the desk when tripping on a cable.
Sure, it adds a redundant extra connector to the chain, but it's proof that patents stimulate innovation!
Seriously, we can do 25.5W on 802.at-2009 NOW. Some vendors are doing 51W by using all 4 pairs.
Yes, I know many of you have laptops that draw almost 200 watts, but most of us don't need over 50W most of the time. If properly designed, the laptop can just "tread water" by slowing or stopping battery drain while drawing 51W during a work session, and then recharge while you're eating lunch or surfing Slashdot.
Imagine hooking your laptop up to power and ethernet at the same time! Single connection, less real estate used up on the exterior.
Just configure the laptop to draw power over the ethernet port, and not only do you not have to worry about a AC to DC brick, but you can travel the world and not have to worry about all the forms of AC power.
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Isn't that the charger for older aluminium powerbooks? Barrel plug and a light at the end...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
I bet you threw a huge fit when phone chargers all turned into USB.
Funny you should mention that. How many phones charged by USB before the iPhone? I can't think of many, I have scores of proprietary chargers that required their own brick.
The original iPhone was one of the first to ship every phone with a USB charging cable, and that was the only way you charged it... (yes there were some others, but not many).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Performance is a blanket license and it does NOT cover all songs - only those who have put their catalog in with one of the bigger houses. It's still illegal to perform many songs in public because they are not blanket licensed by ASCAP or BMI/SESAC.
What you're thinking of is mechanical licensing, which IS set by law and allows you to record a song and sell it as either a recording fixed to a medium (tape, CD, phonorecord) or as a permanent digital download. It's a very narrow right that, I sure, the RIAA would kill if they thought they could. Note that this is only for recording without video, and only for songs YOU record - not for masters by others (such as the original artist). To put a song with a Video you need a synchronization license which must be negotiated for every recording you make, and to reproduce a song sung by someone else you have to have both the mechanical rights (or synch rights for video) *and* the rights from whomever recorded the master track you plan on reproducing - which is not covered by the statute and, again, has to be negotiated for every recording. As an added twist, you can't use the compulsory licensing until somebody has already recorded and released the song on an album for sale.
I do agree, though, that some sort of compulsory licensing of patents would certainly be a help, and would take a great deal of the power away from patent trolls.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Great, so I guess this standard will include the "normal", "micro" and the "mini" laptop charger, just like all other "standards".
Get rid of power cables. We don't need them. We're reasonably close, at least.
USB Power Delivery (USB-PD) specification allows for either-directional power transfer (host->device or a new device->host mode, say, monitor->laptop) of 20V@5A: 100 watts. Two connectors would power any laptop out there just fine with room to spare.
GET RID OF POWER CABLES. Pfawh on your faster horses IEC, your seemingly noble intent masks the superior result. Strategically there's a lot to love about USB's move as well: most laptops use 19V for charging, and the 20V power delivery target allows for a fantastically small & efficient buck regulator to clean that power.
Having stepped on a 3-prong British plug it's damn near impossible to make something resistant to the buggers. Worse than Legos, I swear.
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Magsafe plugs last longer. The #1 cause of dead laptops is dead laptop jacks. Dead laptops end up in landfills paid for by you and me. Europe doesn't tolerate subsidizing corporate waste, I'd like to see the US stop.
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"I wish they'd push a yank-resistant and positive-connecting plug along the lines of Apple's MagSafe. "
Why? I've already seen one of my less-than-graceful friends step on the power plug, it not come loose, and instead of snapping off the jack it snaps the motherboard. What *MIGHT* have been a simple solder job now becomes an entire logic board replacement.
Dumbest idea ever. Should have been two flush pieces, with spring-loaded extensible prongs in the cord end, using a couple of powerful neodymuim rings around the port and end of the cord. Eliminate almost every stress point at the power connection, and make it safer, and reduce the potential for damage even further, almost completely eliminating it in fact.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I deploy PoE switches every week.
If you're using a proper switch & power supplies, there is no issue with running PoE+ on every port of the switch.
If you're using some bargain SOHO switch, yes, you might only be able to power 1/3 of the ports a full PoE+ or 1/2 of them at PoE.
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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh, you're right; there's no doubt there would be complaints.
So we'll no doubt carry on making hundreds of millions of power cables that will never be used, so as to mollify people who lack the foresight to leave the store with everything they need.
I kicked myself once for getting home with a new printer, only to find the manufacturer didn't include a USB A-B cable. I went back to buy one. Since then, I've been good with one cable for multiple devices over the following years, and if I need another, I can get one.
Eh. All things considered, I don't think it'd be the end of the world, and people with either adjust or not... but what else is new?
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
"yankee" which is a slur against denizens of the northeastern US.
Didn't they just now make a USB standard for 100W?
Wouldn't that be much more useful as a laptop standard power plug?
And yeah, it's high time we started doing that with the PC/monitor power cables as well. Almost every computer owner has at least an extra half dozen of them. There's no reason for manufacturers to include something that's been standard forever. I'm surprised it hasn't already been done for the cost savings.
What's the cost savings? $1? What's the cost? 10 - 50% of your customers losing their shit when they can't plug in their new PC/monitor and complaining to the retailer, calling the manufacturers support line, and/or leaving bad reviews online. Yeah, I wonder why they don't do that.
Amazon does a lot of volume. I'm sure they could work out a deal with a lot of the manufacturers and offer monitors both with and without any cables. Similar to how some products have the Frustration-free packaging alongside the retail packaging.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
EU has been pushing micro USB connector for charging phones. "EU wants all companies, ahem Apple, to use standard charger" http://cnet.co/1fKGnUt USB 3.1 will bring with new type-C connector and Power Delivery (PD) function. "Next-gen USB connector a reversible challenge to Apple's Thunderbolt & Lightning" http://bit.ly/1hnwxb2 Why do we need other option?