Plug Off

Alright, so I don't know if this is just because I'm tired and hungry and in a bad mood - but something's been bothering me recently.

So I had an amazing Christmas gift-wise. My family went all out this year and got me amazing gifts, one of which was a 1TB Western Digital MyBook. What a sweet drive. But there's one thing that's off.

The first time I plugged in the hard drive in - I noticed the unique shape of the plug. Rather than a down facing ac adapter, the ac adapter actually points to the side when plugged in. Pretty clever right? I mean when you plug it into a standard two socket wall plug, the other socket is free - pretty clever right? Wrong.

Let's think about this for a second. When do you use a hard drive? When you use a computer. And the average computer has how many plugs? 2. Right. And most computer users who would buy a 1TB drive would probably even have more. Save a router, or a modem, or both, plus maybe some speakers.

When you add it all up, a 1TB external drive will almost always be used near more than 2 other plugs. So enter the power bars that us techies spent so much money on. You know, the ones where the sockets are aligned side by side to allow for many AC adapters. Well guess what - this new MyBook Sideways style AC adapter now makes no sense on these expensive power bars. UPS's either - I mean the most expensive power bar you can buy now doesn't make sense with these new plugs.

Well, whatever. I thought I'd live with it. But then lightning struck twice.

I went to my post office today to pick up my Vonage package, and low and behold - the Vonage phone adapter uses a sideways power adapter! (which for those paying attention has to be used beside a modem and a router) What the hell!?

Now if the world was ideal - all these devices would have internal power bricks (take a hint from the AppleTV or the Wii). But the world of electronics seems insistent on producing these power adapters for things that clearly are used beside a bunch of other electronics.

Ah well - whenever they iron out the scary defects (and thoughts) or wireless power - we'll be flying.

Thanks for reading.