Power bricks - a house built from transformers

Recently I was packing a bag to go away for the weekend and had packed my laptop, iPod and PSP. I then went and picked up the novel I was reading; a hefty 1000 page paperback. While putting that in my bag I thought: “Where’s the power supply?” It took a second for me to remember that a paperback needs no power supply. After adding all the others I had just assumed that it did.

A while back I did the same with a bookcase. I had been looking through the large bookcase in my spare room/office and then walked to the living room. After a minute I went back to the office and had one of those moments when I wondered what I was doing there. I realised I had gone back to the room to ‘switch off’ the bookcase.

These stories tell us that we use so many things which need power. So many adapters, transformers, plugs, and cables. I look forward to a day when it could be a bit simpler and much less bulky. It’s always been the case that smaller laptops and external hard drives have become available only to be accompanied by huge transformers and power supplies. I bought a Lacie, ‘Porsche designed’ external hard drive and it is pretty much a thing of beauty (mostly because it’s square and featureless) but of course it came with a hideous black brick to power it. At least Apple have ones which look like they go with their products not just generic black bricks.

Maybe one day soon we will stop doing this and try to make power supplies, small (I know it’s hard), integrated (it would be the honest thing to do), and if you can do either of these things please make them suit the product. Or why not make them interchangeable between products.

Then again maybe one day in the future they’ll be able to build houses with all the old black bricks we’ve left behind.