We tend to run into these people in Internet cafes and airport lounges. They are the ones whose eyes are restlessly scouring the décor, looking for a vacant power point.
We encounter them in hotels and motels and conference rooms, when they are dealing with Forgotten Charger Phenomenon – a condition which tends to result from hasty, or neglectful packing, or perhaps from sub-conscious resistance to having to lug around an entire family of chargers to feed all those mobile gadgets.
You can get a small taste of this phenomenon in your home town, as it happens, when you’re in your office, and discover that the charger is at home, or vice versa.
Bleeding Edge has experienced the unfortunate consequences so often that we now take precautions against this sudden loss of enthusiasm for our electronic gadgets, in the form of the Targus range of universal adapters. While the original charger for each of our exciting mobile electronic devices stays at home, where we can keep an eye on it, the Targus adapters accompany us to work, or on trips.
The most obvious advantage of these clever little devices is that they use detachable tips to adjust the voltage and provide the right connection for individual devices. The fact that you don’t have to haul a collection of these transformers around with you reduces the physical stresses on today’s electronic nomad.
Targus claims the Universal AC./DC Anyplug 70W power adapter ($144.95) which we use to power the Toshiba R200 laptop for instance, is compatible with 98 per cent of today’s notebook PCs. It ships with 10 tips that fit the most common notebooks. There’s a compatibility chart here which you can consult to see if the standard tip package will accommodate your system. You can order other tips from Targus.
Targus also sells a 90-watt version of the adapter ($179.95) for higher-voltage laptops.
We’ve fitted it with the Targus Mobile 15 accessory power adapter, which plugs into the adapter’s output cable, to charge PDAs and mobile phones. The ability to double the utility of each power point can be a lifesaver in a world in which power points have become an increasingly rare resource.
We had to order a separate “digital iTip” for the Treo 650, which allows us to charge it simultaneously with the notebook. The adapter also charges devices like digital cameras, mobile cameras, GPS systems, Sony, and Nintendo game platform, and some Archos hard drives. The “tip configurator” on the Web site might need a little adjusting, because we found the Tom Tom GPS system listed under “Games”, rather than GPS devices.
The adapter ships with a car charger plug, and an air adaptor for aircraft power systems. It includes a cloth wallet to store tips and charger cables, and the accessor power adapter is nicely designed to accommodate the cable.
Targus has a similar system for Apple users. We use the Mobile 70 universal adapter ($299.95), which comes with an adapter and tips to charge the PowerBook and our iPod at the same time.
The first generation of these adapters suffered from the fact that the power unit was quite bulky, and the plug was attached directly to it, which meant that if the power point was close to the floor or some other obstruction, you couldn’t plug it in. That’s been overcome by the addition of a power cord with a normal-sized plug.
We suspect 92 per cent of Australian households could get very enthusiastic about these products.