On a “Compgeeky” Roll Here

Numerically, my last few posts have been dominated by some computer-related stuff. Well, here’s another one. I had just read an interesting post on the economy and the higher education bubble (They told me if I voted for John McCain young women would be forced to sell their bodies to pay the rent… “ ;-)) and was about to click off, when I saw an add in a sidebar. Now, I ordinarily ignore ads (and indeed, have most ads blocked), but this one intrigued me, so…

I CLICKed on over to see what Jerkstopper was all about.

I have to say that the idea makes sense: a strain relief for notebook power cables. Heck, I do an informal strain relief system on my own and my Wonder Woman’s notebooks now and recommend ANYONE with a notebook do so. What we do is simply make a loop in the notebook’s power cable within about 6″-8″ of the plug into the notebook and place that loop under the notebook. It seems to work well.

But an actual device to formally install a strain relief designed to avert damaging the power connection seems like a good idea, if it’s actually engineered well, as I have seen more than a few notebooks that exhibit the problems outlined on the site as associated with damaged power connectors:

Some typical Laptop AC Power Pin/Connector Problems
The power LED and/or battery charge LED flicker when you wiggle the power cord and/or the AC adapter tip on the back or your laptop.
Laptop suffers from spontaneous and/or instantaneous power-downs for no apparent reason.
Laptop only runs when you keep the power cord and/or plug in a certain postion.
Movement of the AC power adapter plug causes power “glitches” or outages.
Laptop switches from AC power to battery power intermittently.
Strange “clicking” noises coming from the area near the power plug.
Laptop refuses to start or charge a properly inserted battery.
Laptop appears to be “dead” when you plug AC adapter.
Laptop suddenly shuts off without any warning.
Sparks come out of the back of your laptop.
Laptop will not charge the battery and/or Laptop only runs on battery power

While I have made repairs to a few notebooks with damaged power connectors, it’s a PITA task, and not guaranteed to solve the problems caused by damaged power connectors. Some can only be repaired with a complete motherboard replacement, and that can be a REAL PITA on some notebook computers, while on others it’s merely a normal PITA. *heh*

Heck, I might just pop for a set of these. Even if I don’t like the way they’re engineered, they might point me in a direction toward making something I feel to be more suitable to my needs/taste.

BTW, for anyone wanting an update on my experiences with the Win8 Developer Preview, sorry. Not much of an update over previous comments, but you might want to check this out, if the Win8 thing is interesting to you.