Microsoft's 'Replacement' Surface Pro Charger Cable Is an Off-Brand, and Short (theinquirer.net)

Carly Page writes with a story from The Inquirer, where: As part of its Surface Pro charger recall, Microsoft has chosen to replace the sleek, shapely matt[e] plastic original with a cable approximately half the length and ordered from an off-brand manufacturer, in our case China's I-Sheng Electric Wire and Cable Company. Writer Peter Gothard points out a plausible reason for the length, though: "The extraordinarily short length of the cord is presumably to discourage behaviour that resulted in the "tightly wrapped" or "repeatedly bent" cables catching fire in at least 56 separate incidents."

Comments

For uninformed, article title is disingenuous

[Cutriss]

The AC cable for the Surface Pro series is two pieces like most laptop cables. There's a simple AC cable without ground that goes from the wall to the transformer block, and then the transformer has a fixed DC wire that goes to the tablet itself.

This recall *only* affected the AC cable, and that cable was already pretty short (like two feet tops). The bulk of the cable length comes from the DC cable itself, and that did not shorten (because it wasn't replaced). Don't get me wrong, the DC cable has issues and needs a reinforced boot, but we're talking of a total cable length loss of maybe six inches.