Friday, April 20, 2012

Plugs and Surge Protectors

I have a surge protector on my computer.  It's a nice one.  Not the top of the line but not super cheap either.  I think it came with a warranty in case it fails.  Not that I kept any paperwork involving such a thing.

It has eight outlets on it.  Five are side by side and two are actually off to the side.  It also has protection for coaxial cable and phone line, and a cable management system and other doo-dads but I'm not going to explore them right now.

The problem with such a set up on a surge protector is that most electronic devices now have an electronic box of some type attached to the end of their plug.  Therefore instead of a nice normal little plug they have this monstrosity of a box.  With that box the plug will then block several outlets.  My cell phone charger has a narrow box that would actually only block one slot if the outlets were horizontal instead of vertical.  Instead the bloc physically covers two outlets and the cord interferes with a third outlet.  My router has a monstrosity of a square box that can block the outlets on either side and from top to bottom.  However, my printer has a nice box that is actually in the middle of the cord so that the box will sit on the floor and it has a normal plug to fit in the surge protector.

Thus, with all of my computer equipment, I now need to purchase a second surge protector to protect everything.  Currently, my speakers and my cell phone charger are plugged in with no protection.  I wish that these companies would make smarter equipment and start adding a "normal" plug to everything.


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