I really dislike wall warts.
Primarily because they take up so much space near plugs. But also
because; they seem prone to fail more frequently than integrated power
supplies (although this is likely because most wall warts are cheap linear
ones), are hot (also likely because of cheap build quality), waste a good
deal of electricity (once again the fault of cheap warts usually), and
easily come unconnected from the device they are powering when wires are
accidentally (or intentionally) jiggled.
Under my desk at home I have 9 wall warts (Palm, camera,
usb hub, battery charger, external hard drive, cordless
phone, dsl router/modem, and two ethernet switches), connected to a
single 7 outlet power strip via Power
Strip Liberators. Even with my nearly obsessive need to tie up excess wire, it is a mess.
At work I deal with a handful of wall warts at my desk for things like
my USB hub and ethernet switch. But it is not these that caused my
displeasure to bubble forth out of my brain. My complaint is about things
marketed toward businesses and things designed to be mounted in racks Even more specifically,
my complaint is about a
Belkin OmniView 8 Port KVM I have.
Now it is my understanding (gleaned mostly from my electrical
engineering brother) that wall warts are used because; companies can use
off the shelf power supplies, the design of the device is easier as they
don't need to deal with interferance or heat from the power supply, and
they don't need to get their device certified by places like the Underwriters Laboratory since it is a low
voltage device.
Wall warts on my server shelves are a pain. UPS's are
not designed to accommodate them. They are more difficult to tie up
neatly (I purchase cables of the correct length so there is little to tie
up normally). And perhaps the biggest gripe, the damned barrel plug on
the KVM falls out at the slightest nudge (well, it did until I applied a
dab of hot glue to the top of it).
As I now look for environmental monitoring hardware I see wall warts
everywhere. Wall warts on $500 products simply do no make sense. So I
make a plea to all electronics makers; please eliminate wall warts
whenever possible. If not possible at least use high quality inline
warts. While I go out of my way to purchase products without warts for
work, I will file a complaint with any product maker that uses them when
the size of the device could accommodate an internal power supply.
