Well I thought it useful anyway. It a mains powered box with 4 x usb sockets on it. The idea being you can plug in usb items that are usually charged up via usb eg sat-nav, camera etc and let them charge via that rather that a box full of different chargers. The only drawback is it cost about £18. Anyone seen one for a fiver ish :-)
They're around £2 from computer fairs, with the USB sockets on the back of a wall-wart plug. They seem to come in 500mA and 1000mA versions, with no difference in the price. Usually no CE sticker either!
You can also get car cigarette-lighter versions too - very handy. (Solar powered ones too but I've no experience of them)
Indeed, USB charging has become an important factor for me when buying battery-powered kit - I just need to carry around a single charger and a bunch of leads (there are unfortunately numerous plug types but you can't expect everything).
Mathew
I read somewhere recently that some international manufacturer's forum or other has recently agreed to adopt the mini-USB plug as a standard for all new mobile phones, which should mean that chargers will become universal for any phones, and by logical extension, should apply to other devices too. I won't hold my breath, but it would be nice, wouldn't it?
David
There's an upside and a downside to that one.
Let's say you have something like a notebook and a PDA/Blackberry/phone and you charge the PDA from the notebook, using a USB lead.
If the laptop power supply or the laptop breaks, you are screwed because you can't then charge the PDA and at least do email on that.
However, all is not lost. There is the ubiquitous Swiss world travel adaptor/USB charger.
e.g.
I've had one of these for three years and it goes on pretty much weekly trips to one country or another and has held up very well with some less than perfect wall outlets.
Standardisation is a very positive move, although 5v 0.5A is a pretty poor standard, but if it becomes popular as it looks like thats the main thing. 12v 1A would have been a lot more useful. Maybe once usb gets a good hold there will be consumer pressure for a 2nd standard for the higher power stuff.
NT
A link would be useful :-) (Or is google my friend) Actually while ebaying around looking for one I came across this
Item number: 320183373488 Now it's not what I'm looking for, and is one of things from Japan. but how about thise line in the item:-
"We Ship Worldwide ( Except Italy ). "
I wonder why nono to Italy?
Chances are though that you can find a mains PC and they all have USB sockets on 'em...
The 2.5W limit on USB is low but there is nothing to stop kit taking more juice if it's available from the power source.
Italian postal service makes Nigeria look like a good place to do business.
Owain
It's faster with more deliveries per day than in the UK. I use Italian post and couriers on a weekly basis. It's true that there is a terrible problem with pilfering... at the Southampton sorting office when goods are received from Italy. Apparently the Scumpton dorks are too stupid to realise that parcels are scanned when they are taken off the truck/plane so there's a record of delivery into Scumpton and then a remarkable absence of goods leaving the Hall of Theft.
Within Italy and to Italy however I've had no problems with inland posting usally taking half a day. Yes, that's right, half a day. Local letters can often be faster since they still maintain the "Local" postbox and letters are delivered twice a day. This is a remote hill town, cities can have more frequent deliveries.
Royal Mail has always been good at blaming others for their own failures.
Yes, I've got the same one - and I seem to recall it comes with a no- quibble lifetime guarantee too which is reassuring.
I do have a couple of gripes with it though, the first being that I find it's a tad heavy/bulky so doesn't always sit nicely in some crappy foreign sockets. The fault for this lies squarely with the shoddy sockets you often find but the size of the adapter doesn't help (compared with the 'standard' adaptors available).
My second concern is that it's fused - if that fuse went you'd be in trouble as unless you carried one with you you'd have a job and a half finding a replacement in some areas (IIRC it's a 20mm glass fuse?).
Mathew
Yes I agree. I have another odd one as well for that. It's usually the French, Italian and Israeli ones that have that issue. The German/Nordic version of Schucko are normally reasonable.
Yes, you are quite right. I carry two of these adaptors and a pack of fuses.
I map out all that I am doing in my mind and where there are obvious single points of failure with no easy backup I have a duplicate arrangement or reasonable fallback.
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