Shoutbox

Adeptus, thanks for the clarifications. But I do have experience with adapters though. I use many adapters very regulary. I deal with people comming to me to power this or that, or "I have this at home, we can use it for that" and when I take my multimeter, it shows it is not the correct one afterall, or "I forgot my adapter, do you have anything" . All this is also a part of my job.

I was not talking about one particular brand, and certainly not about a type of adapter which is actually not easy to find. Most adapters are not of that kind. I was talking in general. I have a box full of adapters (left-overs from people forgetting theirs, or bad buys, etc) where I often need to grab one, because that group has again forgotten theirs at home and they need to power that device. And none of them are of the type you describe, also if I go to a store the type you descibre is seldom found (only in specialized stores; not in the common mutli shopping market).

And even when talking about that specific brand: plugs have got nothing todo with the supplied voltage or power! Even with that brand. There is no standarization for this kind of plugs and which power they should give. There are some vague guidelines and some useuall types which give the same outage, but again, no standarization at all. For each plug they have and say it give this or that voltage and power, I can show you devices with that same plug which needs a total different power/voltage.

The plugs do not determine what power and/or voltage it will give. For that type of adapter you describe this is exactly the same. It is not the kind of plug which determines it, it is the electronics inside the adapter itself (though, which in this case is build into a part of the plug as a whole).

Go to an electricity shop and confront them with "a plug determines what power it gives" and they will look at you with a face like "one day he's going to blow something up because he connects the wrong things".

Simply saying in one sentence "The voltage setting on most universal laptop power supplies is determined by the plug adapter being used." is completely wrong. If you said "for that particular brand", then it might be correct (and even then it isn't technically correct), but certainly not "most" or "all".

If people read what you've said and take it like that, they go to a hardware store saying I need an adapater with this kind of plug. The people at the hardware store will not be able to help him because the plug does not say anything about the needed power and voltage. Or they buy one themselfs and chances are high they will end up with the wrong adapter (and possibly damaging their device). It is this I want to warn about. If you want to buy an adapter you must primearly know what power and voltage it should be. What kind of plug it needs is actually of little importance as you can buy all kinds of plug converters (<= which also again shows that the type of plug says little about its power/voltage usage).