A Rant About Laptop Cords

At the time of this writing, my laptop is on its last, battery-powered breath.  I have been able to prolong this death by considerable contortions and applying pressure to the wound.  You see, my laptop cable has broken.  AGAIN.  I have had this happen on virtually every laptop I’ve ever owned.  With the exception of the cable Callie ate as a puppy and the one that got fried in a massive power surge, every other cable has broken at a stress point –usually the SAME stress point–right where the flimsy ass wire meets the part that plugs into the actual laptop.

This makes no effing sense to me.  Laptops, by their very nature, are portable.  It’s why most of us have them.  And if they’re portable, that means that they will be moved, packed up, unpacked, plugged in, unplugged, etc. A LOT.  Ergo, the charger cables that go with them should be STURDY.  Yet it is the behemoth desktop machines that have the power cables you’d need bolt cutters to sever.  Someone explain this to me.  When I was ranting about this last night on Twitter, someone mentioned “well, they’re laptops…they’re supposed to be used on battery.”  Maybe so, but I have yet to have a laptop with a battery that lasts anywhere approaching more than 30% of the time advertised.  Laptop batteries suck.  When they make one that really, truly lasts for the 4-6 hours I’m on my machine actively working, then we’ll talk.   And for most of us with laptops, it is our main computer, so they should expect as much or more use on them as the big desktop machines.

Naturally, they did NOT have a replacement cable available through Amazon Prime, so there’s no shipping in 2 days.  I wound up going with one on Ebay that I hope to God will be here by next week because I really don’t know how long all my machinations and manipulation of the cord to make the internal wires touch so the machine will charge is going to keep working.  And let’s face it.  Having a non-functional laptop is going to really put a crimp on my NaNo word count.  Not that I think I’m going to win anyway beyond finishing all my lectures (3 to go), but it’s the principle of the thing.  Not to mention what I do admit is a rather alarming addiction.  I’m sure my husband would love to see how I respond to being without a computer for several days (apart from Friday through Sunday when we’ll be without all electronic devices because we’ll be camping at a motorcycle rally over the weekend).

Thank God for my work computer where I can at least deal with my classes and check email and stuff.

In any event, I make a plea to laptop cord manufacturers to make your power supplies STURDIER.  And get to work on making some that charge wirelessly.  That would be truly awesome.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.