Notice how your printer's power cable can be detached from the printer.
Notice that you can remove the power cable from your computer — be it a laptop or a desktop or a tower.
Why shouldn't this same modular principle be applied across the board to everything electrical?
Why should I have to fuss and fool around with keeping the cord out of my way when I clean my microwave or toaster oven?
For that matter, coffee bean grinders and kitchen mixers etc.
Why should I have to reach behind all the stuff on my kitchen counter to unplug these appliances when it would be so much easier to detach their power cables?
Not really sure Joe, but perhaps it has to do with, planned obsolescence... ;)
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
They would get lost. And manufacturers would start sending the cord without the actual PLUG, as they do now with electronics, so you'd be playing hide and seek to find the cord AND a brick to connect to the outlet.
ReplyDeleteantares
ReplyDeleteFWIW I think you have a good idea, Joe. Yeah, it has inconveniences associated with it, but the current implementation has inconveniences, too. You pays your money, you takes your choice. If you have a choice.
The extra cost of an additional plug and socket is not negligible.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, I like being able to buy or make a very short or extra long power cord.
water.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sunbeam.ca/en_CA/kitchen-appliances/sunbeam-1.7l-detachable-cord-electric-kettle-white/BVSBKT31CD-033.html#
ReplyDeleteMost appliances in Europe use IEC C7 cable, and the replacement cables are dirt cheap.
ReplyDeleteMy mixer and rice cooker have detachable power cords. But it's true lots of devices don't, that should.
ReplyDeleteI've always viewed this as merely a symptom of "People who buy cheap crap want everything built-in". Go to any electronics store, and the cheaper it is, the more functionality is baked into one device. You've got your home-theater-in-a-box and your all-in-one-PC and your modem+router+wifi on one end of the spectrum, and at the other end you've got separate surround sound decoders, tower PC cases with PCIe cards, and ("non-wifi, wired") routers. Power cables are simply one aspect of this. I can look at a Blu-Ray player and tell how expensive it is by whether the power cable is captive or not.
At the professional level, cables are almost always separate. Nobody wants to assemble a 19" rack with 42 pigtails. Or unpack a 3-phase power distro with 5x100' of 2/0 cable.
I assume manufacturers know exactly what they're doing. I've passed on lots of devices because they had captive power cables, and I've paid extra for several to get to the level where they had detachable cables.