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From: "Andy "Krazy" Glew" on 14 Oct 2009 10:19
Packing for a short trip - 2 days and nights on business, 2 back with my
family in Portland, and then back to Bellevue.

A significant portion of my luggage is taken up by power supplies.

What I want to take: 2 power supplies, 1 for each of my laptop PCs, work
and personal; 2 smaller power supplies, 1 for each of my phones, work
and personal; 1 big supply for my CPAP medical device.

I have separate work/personal PCs/phones because I still have to go to
great lengths to separate work stuff from personal stuff. I wish I only
had one.

I'll eliminate one of the phone chargers, at the cost of not being able
to charge them simultaneously.

I love the idea of "universal" chargers like the iGo, so much so that I
have two, and probably need to buy a third for my new devices. They
aren't as universal as one might hope. Unless one adapter can plug in 2
PCs and 2 phones simultaneously, you have the "Gotta remember to swap
chargers" problem. Many such universal chargers can charge a cell phone
and a PC simultaneously.

I wish that I could also squeeze a power bar or squid into my carry-on.

---

comp.arch relevance:

a) "integrity" - the desire to have only one device of any form factor.
Thwarted by security. Desire for companies to own the laptop you
work on.

b) charging architecture: I would rather have one transformer that could
trickle charge all 4 of my devices in 4x the time, than a faster
charger.
From: Bernd Paysan on 14 Oct 2009 11:31
Andy "Krazy" Glew wrote:

> Packing for a short trip - 2 days and nights on business, 2 back with my
> family in Portland, and then back to Bellevue.
>
> A significant portion of my luggage is taken up by power supplies.

Be lucky that you don't travel to UK, because then another significant
portion of your luggage would be plug adapters (UK: the country with the
largest plugs in the world ;-).

> What I want to take: 2 power supplies, 1 for each of my laptop PCs, work
> and personal; 2 smaller power supplies, 1 for each of my phones, work
> and personal; 1 big supply for my CPAP medical device.

Can't help you with your CPAP, this is quite likely not a technical issue
but a political (medical devices under regulation to make them very
expensive and eliminate competition), and where the real cure would be a
bath in the fountain of youth ;-).

The power supplies for the phones have a solution: USB. If you travel
without laptop, take an USB supply with you, if you travel with laptop,
charge the phones through the laptops (this may require some technical
issues, like being able to have USB ports supplied in the laptop even while
it's off and charging). I tend to charge the USB chargeable devices I'm
carrying around with me during the day when the computers are on. I don't
like to buy a gadget without USB charge input. Fortunately, the phone
makers have now committed to mini-USB as universal charge plug (and also my
GPS bike computer is USB charged). Unfortunately, the camera and camcorder
makers haven't. Partially, because they often use two-cell batteries, which
can't be charged at 5V, partially, because they fit the charge regulator
into the supply (then you have a current limited precise 8.4V supply).

The laptop question is more difficult - there ought to be a standard plug
and voltage as well, but if you want to charge two laptops with one supply,
you need a Y-cable, and a way to detect that the supply is loaded, so that
charge rate is reduced to 50%. This requires pressure, but customers
usually don't seem to care. As you probably have different criteria to
chose your private laptop, and different update rates, choosing one that can
share the supply with the business laptop probably is not possible.

However, as you even can't put the pressure on your unreasonable employer to
allow you to use just a single phone and a single laptop, how do you expect
the whole industry, which is led by these PhBs at large, to come up with a
practical solution for everybody, if they fail to come up with practical
solutions for their own employees?

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
From: Terje Mathisen on 14 Oct 2009 13:50
Andy "Krazy" Glew wrote:
> Packing for a short trip - 2 days and nights on business, 2 back with my
> family in Portland, and then back to Bellevue.
>
> A significant portion of my luggage is taken up by power supplies.
>
> What I want to take: 2 power supplies, 1 for each of my laptop PCs, work
> and personal; 2 smaller power supplies, 1 for each of my phones, work
> and personal; 1 big supply for my CPAP medical device.

I always travel with a single charger, which also limits my need for
plug converters, that is of course the laptop charger.

All the rest of my gear can be charged from USB, which really keeps the
bulk & weight down.

Terje
--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
From: Rick Jones on 14 Oct 2009 14:46
Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan(a)gmx.de> wrote:
> Can't help you with your CPAP, this is quite likely not a technical
> issue but a political (medical devices under regulation to make them
> very expensive and eliminate competition), and where the real cure
> would be a bath in the fountain of youth ;-).

Baths in fountains of youth were readily available from any number of
sources, along with various snake oils, potions, elixirs and devices
before the advent of wide-spread regulation requiring demonstration of
safety and efficacy. In some cases, if they can be classified as
"dietary supplements" (or somesuch) they remain.

rick jones
the joy of shades of gray, and the law of unintended consequences
--
a wide gulf separates "what if" from "if only"
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway... :)
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...
From: ChrisQ on 14 Oct 2009 16:38
Andy "Krazy" Glew wrote:
> Packing for a short trip - 2 days and nights on business, 2 back with my
> family in Portland, and then back to Bellevue.
>
> A significant portion of my luggage is taken up by power supplies.
>
> What I want to take: 2 power supplies, 1 for each of my laptop PCs, work
> and personal; 2 smaller power supplies, 1 for each of my phones, work
> and personal; 1 big supply for my CPAP medical device.
>
> I have separate work/personal PCs/phones because I still have to go to
> great lengths to separate work stuff from personal stuff. I wish I only
> had one.
>
> I'll eliminate one of the phone chargers, at the cost of not being able
> to charge them simultaneously.
>
> I love the idea of "universal" chargers like the iGo, so much so that I
> have two, and probably need to buy a third for my new devices. They
> aren't as universal as one might hope. Unless one adapter can plug in 2
> PCs and 2 phones simultaneously, you have the "Gotta remember to swap
> chargers" problem. Many such universal chargers can charge a cell phone
> and a PC simultaneously.
>
> I wish that I could also squeeze a power bar or squid into my carry-on.
>
> ---
>

You seem to have a very cluttered life :-).

One laptop, with easily removable hard drives gets rid of half the bulk.
Don't know about the US, but in europe, one mobile with 2 sim cards gets
rid of another half.

In each case, the storage device defines the function, not what it's
fitted to...

Regards,

Chris





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