Gravitational Pull

Too many black boxes, too many power cords

Posted on 26 May 2009

Heading off for the holiday weekend, I grabbed a bunch of gadgets and junk to stuff in my bag. Amazon Kindle reader – check. Multiple iPods and headphones for the kids – check. Blackberry – check. New Verizon Mifi to test in the boonies – check. Macbook Pro – check. Canon camera – check. They joined the usual assortment of odds and ends that live in my Crumpler Bag of Considerable Embarrassment (actual name) full time.

Of course, with all those gadgets come the required power cords. What a mess. At least the totally awesome  yet horribly named Belkin “Mini Surge Protector with USB” allowed me to forgo most of the bulkier plug-in cords since it can power any gadget using just a USB cord connection. For example, instead of carrying an iPod wall charger, I can just plug in an iPod syncing cable to the Belkin’s powered USB port.

By Monday, the Mifi was out of juice so it was time for a charge. But what’s this? The Mifi can’t use the standard mini-USB to USB connector that works for Blackberries and a few of my other gadgets. It actually has a micro-USB port. What the hey? It’s just like the mini-USB port only — wait for it — smaller. I couldn’t find that cord in the bag so the Internet connection ended early. On such a beautiful day by the shore, no great loss. But can’t the world standardize a bit more? The Kindle and iPods all have their own weird charger connections. I guess it’s too much to hope for everyone to get on the same page to benefit the consumer.

Unpacking it all today, I noticed there’s been a proliferation of little black boxes in my bag of late. Starting from the top left side in the picture below (click through for a bigger photo):

• a Sony digital recorder
• a Miquelrius paper notebook
• a Sandisk Cruzer memory stick sitting on top of the still wicked cool Kensington portable battery pack (mini-USB to power up/any regular USB to power out)
• a crazy-useful miniature Atech compact flash to USB port reader
• Sandisk’s handy MobileMate that reads seven kinds of memory cards and goes into a USB port sitting on top of the aforementioned Mifi
• (Now on the bottom row) An iPod Touch
• a Blackberry
• the Belkin power strip
• the Sprint Novatel cellular modem, soon to be gone

And what did I find smooshed way down in a corner pocket? Why the Mifi’s micro-USB to USB adapter of course. Next time I’ll have to look harder.

For some further good advice about what to carry, Dan Frakes has been writing a fabulous series of columns at MacWorld. The other day he had some good advice on cable selection and Friday he reviewed some miniature gadgets you might want to carry.