[This is another small update on my Problogger Home Office series.]
Bloggers need power. Well, I take that back; if you have a Macbook Air then you won’t need so much because of the unbelievable battery life, but generally you will need power, especially power that is readily available.
Pictured above is just a handful of the power cords that litter my office and my entire home. I have at least 2 in every room and about 11 or 12 of them in total.
Why? Because I like to move around a lot! Sure, I’m trying this ‘standing desk’ thing but I really enjoy changing my environment up often during the day which might mean that I’ll spend the early morning standing at a desk, the mid to late-morning on my sofa, and then the afternoon in a chair at my family’s table.
Regardless of where I am I love it when I sit down and find a power cord easily within reach. You see, I want to make sure that I have power that’s ready to be jacked in at a moments notice without having to fumble to find a socket or doing the plug-unplug dance.
This is just one of the many features of my home office that I’d like to take to the “next level” – I want to see if it’s possible to seamlessly integrate power cords (for both Mac and Windows-based machines) into the floor, walls, and even the ceiling perhaps.
When I lived in Japan I can remember one of the neatest things was that the gas stations had their pumps attached to the ceiling of the station so that cars could access the pumps from any angle and from nearly any location.
It was pretty sweet!
I’d love to do something similar with power cords where they are always available, on-demand, from any location.
Why not, right? Until they invent some seriously-cool wireless power station for laptops this will probably have to do.
A bit more clean now...
How about you? Have any creative methods for power management and creating an on-demand supply to your systems?
[This is another small update on my Problogger Home Office series.]
Hahaa! How many computers do you have!!!???
I’m definitely ready for wireless electricity! It’s going to be one of the most exciting developments for bloggers, because we’ll no longer have to fight each other for the one power outlet at Barnes & Noble or call it early due to lack of power.
That said, I think it’d be awesome to have built in power areas at the office … though, I’m not sure the rest of us have as many power cords as you, lol.
I recently picked up an 11″ Air, too … soooooo good!
awesome! let me know how you like it!
Killer idea! I love the Japan vibe of that.
I love the idea of the Apple display having the power cord built in for the MacBooks.
that is pretty hawt.
Cords are so 2000′s; instead, consider plumbing your house for wireless power…just be sure to make the diameter of the induction coil about the same size as the exterior of your house so you can roam everywhere:
http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html
oh… i wish…
Power cords integrated “into” the house would be pretty sweet.
i’m going to take a serious look into it!
Hi John,
I used to work in biotech labs and all our power cords were coming down from the ceiling – you just reached up and pulled one down as you needed it. That was for safety as it reduced the risk of electric shock when something got spilled. Quite a good system as long as you remembered not to whack your head on a dangling plug!
i’m a small asian person… it’s my buddies that would have to watch their heads!
When my wife and I moved into our flat after we got married it soon became apparent that I would need to loose some of the PC bits and bobs I had in various boxes. So we got rid of a massive chunk of the stuff that no-one in this family was ever gonna need again.
While a stick of 16MB 133MHZ RAM gave me fuzzy memories it was just junk! The best part was going through the power leads, I threw away:
13 x IEC leads
&
8 x Figure * leads.
But still kept 3 of each as spares!
haha!
i need to do some serious cleaning as well…
John, I deal with the same issue –
I cannot believe that with all of the advancement in technology — we still have not been able to figure out how to go wireless.
My wife does interior design and she always freaks out with the amount of wires my devices have — it cramps the style for sure
But for now, there is no other way around it!
Thank you for the post!
Peace,
Bogdan.
sure thing bodgan! love to see some pictures…!
I dont really have any fancy setups but it is rather annoying that my laptop’s battery life only lasts for about 3 hours. I guess that is one of the downsides of having a non mac book. Pretty cool to know about how Japan does Gas, I think it would be hard to change the ‘status quo’ of the American style of pumping gas.
On a side note, thats pretty smart of you to set it up like that, I am sure it must save alot of time and headaches compared to having only one power chord.
-Jean
jean
i do. it saves time and a bit of stress!