The great thing about power strips is that they let us run a bunch of devices despite a limited number of wall outlets. The bad thing about power strips is that that’s all they do.
And I didn’t even know that that was a downside, but I’ve just found out about Youmo, an upcoming product that makes every power strip I own look like complete garbage. I am absolutely exaggerating there; my power strips are both useful and attractive. But this new thing looks incredibly cool, too.
It’s true: Power strips are the least-sexy of gadgets to talk about. This Satechi Aluminum Power Strip with USB, however, is as gorgeous as it gets in this admittedly prosaic product category.
Each of our devices needs a mothership so to speak, that place where, at the end of a long day with the battery in the red, they can all return to one place and dock to recharge. This thought occurs to me every time I go to leave the house and must first round up my phone, iPad, computer and camera batteries from the various outlets I left them at the night before.
The accessories company Satechi has built the International Space Station of power strips.
Modern day meetings around the conference table may be a rare occurrence in our often-mobile and telecommuting world, but when they happen, the incoming mass of iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks need a lot of electricity.
Instead of making all your employees figure out where the outlets are (under the table? behind them on the wall?), why not provide a big fat power center in the middle of the action? The Belkin Meeting Room Power Center aims to do just that, with a huge, round UFO-looking power hub that sports four actual plugs and a generous eight USB ports.
That’s a lot of power.
