Eschew wall-warts, with Green Plug

It's a powerful IT Blogwatch: in which Green Plug gains support for its universal power adapter technology. Not to mention the Washington Lottery takes flight...

James Niccolai reports:

A technology that could help the environment by eliminating the need to ship a power adapter with every electronics device got a vote of confidence Friday from consumer electronics maker Westinghouse ... committed to using a smart power technology developed by a start-up company, Green Plug, that aims to let people use a single "universal adapter" to power their laptops, cell phones and other electronics gear. Most products today ship with a custom adapter that converts AC power from a wall socket into the correct DC power required for each device ... The technology's success depends partly on getting support from electronics manufacturers, who will need to embed Green Plug's firmware into their devices so that they can send their power requirements to the adapter. That's why Westinghouse's support is significant. more

Geoff Fox adds:

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) ... What attracts Westinghouse ... 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. more

Elaine Chow adds stats:

434 million consumer electronics devices are “retired” in the U.S. each year. Those products, and their power cords usually end up in landfills. Meanwhile, over 3 billion power adapters will be shipped worldwide this year. Imagine how much less that figure would be if everything plugged into a single hub. more

But Darren Murph ain't so sure:

Even Darwin Chang, Westy's CTO, admitted that his firm "wasn't the largest, but somebody has to be the first." Chang is hoping that utilizing said tech will help it cut costs by eliminating the need to ship power adapters with its wares, but we'd say that's being pretty optimistic. Really, the only way that will go over well is if hordes of other firms jump on the (currently desolate) bandwagon in short order -- any takers? more

And Ritz_Just_Ritz poo-poos the idea too:

The cost to add the technology to a company's device is listed as US$2. The cost for a company to produce their own wall wart in China...probably less than US$2....and no licensing fees to worry about and no worries that the customer might not have a charger. This idea is going nowhere. In this case, I think the Chinese government actually got it right. They've forced all cell phone manufacturers to provide a USB port for charging the phones. Seems like a reasonable standard to me. more

Tomas isn't impressed, either:

Does that mean that I have to un-plug my lappy to charge my cell, or maybe have a $100 "all-purpose" adapter in each room so I can power my lappy in the living room, charge my cellphone in the bedroom, have my portable radio playing in the kitchen, and all the other things that use power bricks all over the house? Do I get multiple smart power units at a hundred a pop instead of the cheapo $2 ones I use now? ... Will it really handle an 85 watt load for a loaded laptop plus the dozen other devices that need simultaneous power for operation/charging? ... Naw. I'll stick with my little cheap wall warts and a power strip with a switch... more

And finally...

• Washington Lottery: Birds [Hat tip: Meg Fowler]
  

Buffer overflow:

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• Daniel A. Begun: Google To Develop ISP Throttling Detector
• Anand Rajaraman: Venture Capital, Angels or Bootstrap?
• Brian Flora: Using ITIL to Drive Business Innovation
• Keith Combs: What I learned at TechEd 2008 this week
• Corvida: Why IM Interoperability May Just be a Dream
• Chris Pirillo: Do you Have a Windows 7 Features Wishlist?

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Seth Weintraub: 3G iPhone will have slower speeds on AT&T?
• Don Tennant: Xerox chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy on CEO pay
• Thomas Hoffman: It's not easy being green
• Mark Hall: Replace old SAN with servers
• Shark Tank: Perfect storm
• Shark Bait: Passwords & More

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 21 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Microhoogle: TNG
• Salaries through the looking-Glassdoor.com
• A petaFLOPS is a lot of FLOPS