SecurityDude, CISSP-ISSAP is an IT consultant, Security & Privacy Advocate and blogger at large with over 20 years IT experience. SecurityDude shares tips, tricks, and info that the average networking professional will find interesting and indispensable.
Over the last year, I have written quite few articles on tips for business travelers. My goal with all of them is to pass on advice that I have learned the hard way.
2008 has been the busiest international travel year of my life. I have been to Moscow, Frankfurt, London, Hamburg, Utrecht (twice), Dubai, Sydney & Brussels. I am at 115,000 miles and counting. One thing is common in all of these cities: Your American plug won’t power your laptop.
If you travel outside North America, you know you need some kind of converter. For several years, I have used a small travel kit from Brookstone. The Brookstone kit has met all of my power needs until two weeks ago in Brussels. The adapter that I plug my laptop into BROKE. Mondays can suck even if everything works, so THIS Monday really sucked.
The old saying “It’s better to be lucky than good” came to my rescue. Two of my customers were from HP and one of them carried a spare power cable that fit my HP laptop. I vowed at that point to abandon adapters altogether. This led me to a voyage of discovery that I would like to share with readers.
First, how do you know what country uses a particular connector? DBI Corporation has a great listing of the plug types. Armed with this information, the hard part begins. Now you have to figure out what type of connector plugs into the power brick for your laptop. Luckily, there are two main types: Mickey Mouse and Figure 8. The Mickey Mouse is also referred to as a Clover Leaf.
Whenever you are Scroogling for something as specific as a power cable with two particular ends, it pays to know the “real” names. The Micky Mouse connector is defined in IEC Standard IEC 320-C5 and the Figure 8 is IEC 820-C7. They can be abbreviated as “C5″ & “C7″.
After a bit of searching, I found a company called BuyPowerGear that sells the power cables native to all the countries I visit. The other benefit of having a “native” power cord is a subtle signal to your customers that you spend enough time in their part of the world to do things their way.
If this article saves even one traveler from overseas embarrassment, it was worth writing.
Tags: business travel, plugs, power cables
