On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 12:13:46PM +0000, Matt Emson wrote:
> UK (and Irish) plugs are completely different. They are far, far safer
> in practice. Each plug has a rated fuse (3, 5 and 13 amps are common in
> various devices.) Our plugs are designed to fail at the plug before
> damaging the appliance. We also have an earth pin on all plugs (though
> some devices don't use it.) This means that we don't have the "my outlet
> has no earth pin" issue that people some times hack around in the US/Europe.
This is all true, but those plugs take up a huge amount of space in
laptop bags... and the number of times that I've had my equipment
blow up due to grounding problems or power surges is nil. And a fuse
doesn't protect against voltage spikes.
> > ...and the UK too, if you activate the interlock on the (missing) earth
> > leg with a toothpick (240vAC scares me) when you plug it in.
>
> So, what you are advocating is electrocuting yourself if the earth is
> "live" and bypassing the fuse so that you can blow up your device in
> case of a power surge? :-P (yes, I know.. the UK charger has no user
> accessible fuse)
What I recommend to fellow road warriors, is if you ever go to Japan,
get one of these:
http://www.warrior.co.jp/go-con.htm
(Scroll to the bottom of the page to see pictures of how it can be
configured.)
It takes up a very tiny amount of space in your laptop bag, and it has
a nice safe plastic ground-defeat for the UK plugs which is much safer
than using a toothpick or a screwdriver. Not available for sale in
the US or EU, probably because the safety bureaucrats would have
apoplectic seizures over the thing, but I've never had a problem using
it in over ten years.
- Ted
