A new addition to the family !!!

Like SRK says in "Om Shanti Om",

Mind it, rascala!

San is not pregnant and no, there are no new pets in the house either!

We are talking about the new addition, to the long list of charging devices that clutter the house. There, if all that let down has made you angry, so far so good.

We are now running out of power outlets in the house. We have two cell phone chargers, two bluetooth earpiece chargers, a "universal" charger for camera and camcorder Lithium Ion batteries, not to mention all those outlets required for charging laptops etc.

Now, if you ask me, "So what? This is what everyone who is learning to go the hi-tech way is going through!", all I have to say is, we already had three different types of connectors. The latest bluetooth connector is circular! Looks like some smarty pants got the idea, to take those press buttons from my daughter's easy diaper change dress, and decided to make a charger plug out of it! The earpiece has the outie button and the charger has the innie button! Genius! Next, we can take the old "body" hook and make a charger connecter out of it!

Note, how on the outlet end, they all look the same. The output voltage, current, whatever, whatever, is all the same!!! The way to connect it to the device is different.

There are two reasons for my pain.

1. Most of these are left plugged into the wall by mistake when we go to work, and a friend tells me that when you keep these plugged in, they waste energy (however small it might be). Imagine 4-5 of these in each household, in every household in the US! What a waste of energy!

2. All these phones, devices break, and they usually do, anywhere between 1 day after warranty to 1 month after warranty, with clinical precision. The chinese have perfected the art of making things, as well as making things die exactly after the default warranty time. Guess where all these chargers end up after that? In the garbage can and eventually in some landfill. How much plastic, metal, and how much energy went into making these chargers?

If all these devices have to fit into the 110 V outlet(which itself is unique compared to the rest of the world), why cannot the government regulate that there be one type of connection for all such communication devices?

Now, as an inventor, I am all for Intellectual property and points that differentiate one technology from another. Here is why regulating the connectors is not going to impact the bottomline of the companies making these devices.

a. People usually buy the phones. They rarely go buy chargers. (They do buy extra chargers for Car adapters) but those are not the cash cows for the phone companies.

b. The phones are unique. The chargers are usually packaged with the phones, and are built into the cost of the phone they sell.

c. The chargers outlive the phones by a 3:1 ratio or longer. In other words, if you cell phone starts going kaput on the 366th day after purchase, the charger will work for another two plus years!

The cell phone companies could definitely buy public goodwill, by going to a single connector for the chargers.

If we can have one type of Compact Disc format all over the world, one type of high def DVD disk triumph over another, why cannot we have one type of charger become the only charger for the entire cell phone, handheld, earpiece device market?

It would make a significant impact to going green!

Who am I kidding? We live in the US of A, where we would make all the wrong choices when it comes to energy and energy policy, just to further the interests of the oily few, not to mention a population that is educated but does not feel empowered to do anything, myself included.

The worse part is that we live in a capitalistic world where we sincerely believe, "The customer is always king!". Even a USA today pie chart will show you that more than 67% of americans with cell phones would prefer a single charger! By the way, that number, has nothing to do with the cell phone issue. In "thorough statistical analysis" done by USA Today, in their front page news, the pie chart usually shows 67% of Americans favoring something!

Will the average customer, consumer raise his voice in unison to get a single charger?

Only time will tell!

.