Planet Geek

All hail USB rechargers!

Business yammerings , Geekitude

Gosh, the fellow who figured out that USB devices had enough oomph on the bus to recharge the plethora of mobile geek devices we carry around should get some sort of award. With these gadgets, I've lowered the number of small chargers and other hardware I need to haul around with me when travelling. Here's a couple basics...

My bluetooth headphones have a small Mini-B style plug where the microphone normally plugs in. Pop out the mic, and plug in your Type-A to Mini-B cable in, and voila! It recharges! Conveniently, this cable is the same one I use to download images from my Olympus C770 camera, so there's the first 'combination of functions' solution.

By far the most useful item is charge and sync cable for my Treo. First, it allows hot-syncing between the Treo and clipper. I'm forever losing sync cables and getting lost in the maze of wiring on my desk. This cable not only syncs, but it -retracts- into a the size of a keyfob. No tangling! It lives happily in my backpack pocket. That alone would be handy, but it also charges the Treo from the USB port. Yep, no more carrying another charger around, I just need this one cable. Hooray! As I type, the Treo is sitting on the desk next to me happily vampiring off some of clippers' spare wattage.

What am I missing? Not a lot. I'd like a decent USB based charger for the battery in my camera, but that is probably not too likely, alas. As it is, I've been able to limit my power supply portage to just the laptop brick, which is fine by me. Besides, on cold nights, that brick makes a dandy foot warmer.

Posted by dbs at December 11, 2006 4:14 PM