Plug adapter shaves a few ounces from heavy power bricks

One of the things I love about the Asus Eee PC 1000H is that I can get about 5 hours of battery life from a single charge of its 6 cell battery. But if you’re saddled with a netbook or laptop with a smaller battery, you might be lucky to get 2 or 3 hours of use. And that means you probably have to carry a power brick and cable with you when you leave the house, which can add almost a pound to the weight of some laptops.

Julie over at The Gadgeteer discovered an interesting solution with the help of the folks at the MSI Wind forums. You can pick up a small plug adapter for $3 from Stayonline.com and plug it directly into your power brick. While you still have to carry the power brick with you, you can leave the cord that runs from the power adapter to the wall socket at home and just use the plug adapter to plug the brick into a wall socket. That shaved a total of 4 ounces off of Julie’s power supply.

The plug adaptor may work with other laptop power supplies as well. Make sure to check the voltage before trying it with another device.


Posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008, 10:21 am by Brad Linder
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  • Bolomkxxviii
    Thats great, if the cord is long enough without the piece you replaced.
  • If only it was at least few inches long, to allow for strain relief, this might be a great idea. But I have trouble imagining an outlet location where I'd want to plug in a power brick suspended only by the strength of the prongs on the plug itself. (Small extender cables, thankfully, are available and cheap, but even so, I'd rather the plug be a small distance from the brick -- otherwise, it seems an awkward, breakable complex.)

    timothy
  • I have a Zip Linq retractable power cord that also works well, and is smaller and lighter than most of the cords that come with notebooks.

    http://www.amazon.com/CABLES-UNLIMITED-ZIP-LINQ...
  • choi9999
    Does this work with the EEE 1000H?
  • lxny
    I can do one better. A short 1 ft cord, with a two prong tip for 99c!

    http://imagescl.cyberguys.com/images/prod_main/...

    If you are hard set on a three prong tip, it's only 50c more:

    http://imagescl.cyberguys.com/images/prod_main/...

    for $5 s/h at http://Cyberguys.com, search on "cloverleaf"
  • Brad,
    Thanks for linking my review :o)

    As for the comment about being afraid to plug this combination into a wall outlet without any strain relief, you have nothing to fear since it's a 3 prong plug. Unless you have a really sloppy (loose) outlet, it ends up being really sturdy and won't easily fall out of the wall.

    Oh, one more thing... this adapter is for clover leaf style plug slot ac adapters. I've not seen one like this lately... most of the time you see figure eight style slots in these ac adapters...
  • thanks to PrincessNybor for the ZipLinq reference. Think it's a better solution, for me. I just ordered 4 of them.
  • saab_rider
    I found many more options back in May:
    http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=2451...

    I prefer the L-shaped plugs, as they don't make the brick chargers stick out of the wall.

    These are figure 8 plugs, and they work just fine with the Eee PC adapter.
  • choi9999
    The Asus travel charger here *looks* as if it'd be ideal:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item...

    BUT it does not work with the EEE 1000, nor I suspect the 900 or 901. It looks as if it was designed for the 4G:
    http://estore.asus.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=4082

    Any idea if Asus will come out with a comparable charger for the 900/901/1000? Or if one already exists?
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