It’s gotten easier to get away with forgetting to take a laptop charger
SANTA CLARA, Calif.
Eighteen years ago, I managed to forget to pack my laptop’s charger for a transcon business trip, didn’t realize my oversight until reaching Dulles Airport, and then swore that I would never make that mistake again. Reader, you can guess what I did Tuesday morning.
In my inadequate defense, the compact, Wirecutter-endorsed charger I’d meant to bring is so small that its absence from my gadget-accessories bag was easy to overlook until I reached for it at the Capital One lounge at IAD. And the night before, its black USB-C cable was apparently too easy for me to overlook draped across the dark rug in my home office after I unplugged it from my laptop, tucked the laptop into the sleeve in my messenger bag, and then stupidly left the charger plugged into the wall.
But unlike in January of 2007, when I was heading to CES with a Dell laptop that needed a proprietary charger that I discovered was almost as rare in Vegas as a blackjack dealer handing you two aces in a row, this HP laptop charges via the same USB-C port as every other portable computer I own.
So I did not freak out but did resolve to stick to my phone for e-mail until I could get to my layover in Denver, where I knew multiple lounges would offer USB ports for the adapter cable I did still have tucked into that bag.
(That adapter cable is one of the best pieces of tech-event swag I’ve ever collected, as it includes a Qi cordless charger in a pod between its combination USB A/C plug and the USB-C, micro-USB and Lightning plugs at its other end. Whoever at Supermicro marketing picked this thing as a giveaway at HumanX in March, tell your boss I said you deserve a raise.)
After mostly recharging my phone in DEN, when I checked into the Hyatt Regency here Tuesday evening–where the organizers of TechEx North America are hosting me in return for moderating three panels at that conference–I asked if they might have a spare USB-C charger I could borrow. The rep at the front desk said they’d check, and barely a minute after I got to my room, somebody from housekeeping showed up with a new iPad charger.
I have to smile at a hotel bailing me out like this: I’d had to buy that compact USB-C charger after I’d left this HP’s original, larger power brick at a fancy hotel in D.C. during a conference there in February, after which nobody at the hotel was able to locate it even though I’d taped my business card to the thing.
One lesson of this episode is that by ensuring that devices finally use the same connector, the tech industry finally solved the problem of needing to find the right charger for a laptop, phone or tablet. It’s worth recognizing when these companies do something right–even if in Apple’s case, it seems to have required a shove from European Union regulations that made USB-C a required standard.
The other is that since I’m developing a bit of a history of leaving a laptop charger at home, I need to get myself into the habit of unplugging that thing from the outlet before I unplug it from my laptop.
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