Transformers

Thought I'd start with something fairly easy to pick at...

Anyway so what's the give with power supplies for all our lovely consumer toys, eh? Have you noticed how you just can't share the charger, power adaptor or supply for your phone, camcorder, camera, laptop, games console etc. etc?

Ok, within a given group of equipment the voltages and currents needed are often pretty much the same, but the manufacturers, in their infinite wisdom, seem to find endless new-fangled sockets and plugs to prevent us using them on other bits of kit. To add to the misery they change the voltages too so that gear won't either even fire up, or it'll blow up (hence invalidating your warranty too). So you find things like 7.2V on a camcorder that could easily have been something fairly standard like 6 or 9V.

And mobile phones too, virtually none of them are interchangeable these days. It used to be that if you had a Nokia then you could use the psu from anyone else that had a Nokia, very handy in those moments of dead battery.

So why do they do it, technical reasons perhaps? No of course not, they make them all different so you have to go out and buy a replacement, often at hefty street prices, and then if you need a car charger it also has to be acquired too.

Once your bits of kit finally bite the dust, as they all too soon inevitably do, then you end up with a pile of unusable chargers and connectors. Try taking these to the recycling people, they'll have the phone, fine thanks, but aren't interested in these!

If you look online you can find OEM copies of most power adaptors, often from Chinese sources (hey they made the originals in the first place) at a fraction of the cost, so someone in the middle is making a killing out of us suckers...

The manufacturers love these wall warts so much they almost always use them in preference of putting the power supply inside a bit of gear. For example I've just bought an electric piano and it's got plenty of room in its case for the power supply, but oh no it's got an ugly lump that plugs into it (like its a shaver or something!). A standard IEC mains cable would have been much better, but hey that's too easy and cheap to replace if I lose it...

Seems someone needs to stop this ridiculous and wasteful practice before we all drown in a mountain of black bits, or perhaps they'll transform into something useful magically, I doubt it ;-)

Well good news! Seems that after pressure from european administrators that power supplies for 'most' mobile phones are due to be standardised, thus preventing at least some of the aforementioned wastage. Apparently even Apple are due to implement this change for their iPhone too (remains to be seen) but this is a positive step forward for a change!

My only concern is that they seem to have plumped for the mini USB plug as the connector which, I feel, is a mistake as this is a standard socket on computers and digital cameras and, it's not going to take long before someone plugs their phone psu into the socket designed for transferring photos etc. with I expect the wrong result...