I'm sure it wasn't the first time, but on April 4, 2007, PC Magazine's Resident Kvetch John C. Dvorak went off on power supplies and connectors.
I honestly believe that Congress should pass a law on PC connectors, keeping the number of designs to an absolute minimum. By law, product makers should have to choose between, say, two types of connectors, ensuring that devices work only with those two designs. I'm not kidding.
Sit down John, your dreams may very well come true! Westinghouse has just signed on with Green Plug. The goal is converting Westinghouse's product line to use a "universal adapter" for power. Right now, every individual item you use, from cell phone to laptops to speakers to routers to power tools, needs a different power supply between itself and the wall. A universal adapter makes that number one (the loneliest number that you'll ever do).
Green Plug's mantra is go with them and "all cables and connectors are uniform; so, they work with any device! Being intelligent power sources, they eliminate wasted "phantom power" (power that is wasted when chargers are plugged in and either connected to devices that are fully charged or have no devices connected to them) and improve power utilization and efficiency."
George Westinghouse's industrial behemoth is a much smaller company today. Westinghouse's electronics product line is limited mostly to LCD televisions, computer monitors and digital photo frames. Even their CTO, Darwin Chang, admits Westinghouse doesn't have the heft to move the market on their own.
What attracts Westinghouse, and might attract other companies, is the potential cost savings. Instead of having a separate unit plug into the AC outlet on your wall for each device you're powering, there will be one Green Plug hub and then a single cable to each device. The hub will figure out the proper voltage and current. Manufacturers will just ship a cable and skip the costly wall warts, because a single Green Plug hub will power all your devices.
We're talking huge numbers here. According to Green Plug, this year alone
* 3.2 billion external power supplies will be manufactured worldwide
* 737 million external power supplies will be shipped to the U.S.
* 434 million external power supplies will be retired in the U.S. alone and only 12.6% of them will be recycled, resulting in 379 million external power supplies going into U.S. landfill's.
If other manufacturers jump on board will Dvorak finally stop complaining? Please! Green Plug specializes in electronics, not miracles.
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