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

And, it cheaper

[Overzeetop]

It's cheaper than providing a high-quality cable which isn't as affected by wrapping, or providing a built in wrapping mechanism, or some other inventive technical fix.

It's not like this is for some super-premium flagship device that they're...oh, whoops.

Re:And, it cheaper

[macs4all]

It's cheaper than providing a high-quality cable which isn't as affected by wrapping

You mean like Apple does with it's silicone-rubber cables that resist cracking...

or providing a built in wrapping mechanism

You mean like Apple does on many chargers.

Now cue all the people who yank their charger cables out "by the roots" repeatedly, then complain that the cables eventually fail at the junction of the connector and cable.

Everything has a breaking-point; but obviously Microsoft paid absolutely ZERO attention to both the problem, and what's worse, to the supposed "solution".

Re:And, it cheaper

[Maxwell]

SP3 owner here. They could have made the power adapter a wall wart - it isn't that big. Wallwart---cable--connector. Simple Instead they went wall--cable--brick---cable---connector. This just begs to have both cables wrapped around the brick when travelling. It's that first cable that breaks open. The second cable is much more robust, has the flexy thing at the joint and is permanently attached to the brick. the first cable is a standard type used in electric razors, old toshiba laptops etc. Very common part. And from the pic the replacement does not look anymore robust than the original...so will have exactly same issue....people will wrap it around the brick..and it will fail.

Re:And, it cheaper

[fustakrakich]

The person who invented the wall wart should be taken out and shot. I can only use two of the six outlets on the power strip. Some are so heavy they fall out of the wall socket. "cable--brick--cable" eliminates that problem. Flexing the cable when you're packing the thing two or three times a day, every day, is going to break it pretty quick, no matter how well it is made.

Re:And, it cheaper

[BronsCon]

Or cue all the people who treat their chargers with some respect and yet still have these issues. I don't wrap my MacBook charger cables around the provided wrap tines because even those are too tight, with sharp 90 degree corners at the inner wrapping; I loop the cord slightly larger than the charger itself and use a proper velcro wrap to hold it together and have never had an issue with cable breakage. However, though I also always unplug the charger by the connector, and never by the cable, between my wife and I we've bought 5 chargers, just to have 4 for our 3 MacBooks (when you add in the ones that were included with the MacBooks themselves, you'll note that we've had 4 failures out of 8 chargers).

Of the 4 failed chargers, 3 were due to cable deterioration and one was due to the charger finally giving up the ghost due to the cable having been mangled in the workings of a recliner, then repaired, several times. Note that this charger is the only one that we had at the same time as the recliner, so the others were not possibly exposed to that abuse. Something tells me that charger, which predates the other by at least a year, was build with some quality, while the current crop are not. It's also worth noting that, of the 4 chargers we currently have, the one on my desk sits, unplugged, because the insulation near the connector is browning, the one I'm using currently is developing a crack near the connector, the one my wife is currently using has a flake of insulation that cracked right out next to the connector, and our other spare has several layers of shrink-wrap holding the insulation together at the connector.

I might be inclined to say that, perhaps, my wife is not as careful with the chargers as I am, if not for the fact that the failing one on my desk is MagSafe 2, which she can't use, the one I'm using now is the one that I, and only I, use for both my 17" MBP and my Retina (via Apple-supplied MS->MS2 adapter), and the one with the shrink wrap on it is the one that resided at my desk prior to getting the Retina and, thus, was only used by me. That rules out abuse by her that I am not aware of.

For reference, I also use a few PC laptops, which require significantly more force to unplug, some of which aren't as easy to grip and do get pulled out by the roots. I keep a spare charger for each, so one can stay at my desk and the other can be used elsewhere in the house, or when traveling, and have literally never (in 20 years of laptop ownership) had a cable failure except with Apple products. Likewise with USB cables; I think I might have had one fail when I used it as a tie-down when I couldn't find any rope, bot aside from that, I've had a handful of lightning (both Apple and 3rd-party) fail, though the 3rd party failures were due to abuse and being stepped on in the car I can't say the same about the Apple cable failures. I've also had a few 30-pin cables fail, all Apple cables, my aftermarket cables are still holding up for my 1st-gen iPad, iPod Classic, and 1st-gen Nano.

TL;DR: I hope you were being facetious when you implied that Apple got their cables and chargers right. Also, charger plug recall.

Re:And, it cheaper

[bondsbw]

It seems that which replacement you get largely depends on the outlet type, which of course depends on your location. Plenty of people are saying their replacement cord looks identical or nearly identical while having different part numbers.

Re:And, it cheaper

[fustakrakich]

Yo dawg! I got a cable for your cable! Only a dollah! Buy three and I guarantee at least two of them will work. Such a deal!

Sorry, I shouldn't have to buy and carry an extra extension cable... The damn charger is already one too many.

Picture is misleading, so is affected system desc

[SuperKendall]

For the few of you that actually bothered to click on the article link, the picture shows some kind of really short cord with a plug at the end...

I don't know what the hell that is but it cannot be the cord the article is about, because the cord MS is sending is just the cord that goes between the power brick and Surface Pro, so it doesn't have a plug.

Also worth noting that the article summary might lad you to believe this was about the current Surface Pro, but it's not - Surface Pro 3 and older. Even then it does not apply to a Surface Pro 3 you'd buy new from Microsoft now, they ship with fixed cables already. It doesn't affect the Surface Pro 4 at all.

Cables aren't made for bending and wrapping!

[mnslinky]

It'd be nice if customers would figure this out. They're supposed to be kept flat and straight, or left in the packaging they shipped in. jeez.

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.

Re:For uninformed, article title is disingenuous

[Anonymous Coward]

I just received 15 of them.

The new ones are exactly the same length as the cable they replaced.

Re:For uninformed, article title is disingenuous

[Khyber]

"making it NOT a neutral line."

Until some dumbass (Like I've seen in Texas) puts tied neutral/grounds too close to separated grounds, and wet ground conditions cause problems when lighting hits.

But hey, I've actually bothered with having to install full-building electrical systems. You keep talking.

Re:There must be peace in the middle east...

[Nkwe]

I got my replacement yesterday. It was about a half inch longer then the original. Seems like a non news event to me as well. I have the US version, perhaps other models changed; even if they did, I don't think a free replacement is much of a news event.

A better question is

[hypergreatthing]

What exactly is an on-brand power to converter cable manufacturer?