My Opera
Targus sucks
Tuesday, February 8, 2011 10:39:05 AM
So the SPARCbook's power supply died and I had to hunt for a replacement. It's nothing exotic - 12V, 50W, unremarkable barrel connector. Nothing fancy at all. After some poking around I found out that Targus makes 'universal' laptop chargers that supposedly work with any laptop. Since the SPARCbook's requirements were nothing extraordinary I bought one.
As it turns out these things are far less universal than they want you to believe. The 'universality' is achieved by using coded tips that tell the power supply what voltage to use and then wire it to a connector, they come with 10 tips for supposedly the most common models. So far so good. I found a connector that fit the SPARCbook but unfortunately it gave me 16V so I went to Targus' website in order to find a tip that works and that's where the trouble began.
Their website gives no technical ( or rather, useful ) information whatsoever. All you get is either pictures of the tips with no information or a searchable list of laptop models, devices etc., if your laptop isn't listed you're out of luck. After some fruitless searching I finally sent a message to their technical support - after all they should know what they're selling and surely there's another laptop out there that needs the same connector and voltage, it's not like Tadpole didn't use standard parts wherever possible.
Well, the answer I got is responsible for this post's headline - quite possible the most useless response I ever got from any 'technical' support ever. They told me I'm out of luck if my laptop isn't listed and they wouldn't recommend plugging it in with 16V. No attempt at solving the problem at all, just ha-ha we got your money now bugger off.
Well, they're not going to get any further business from me, even if some day I need a power supply for a laptop that is on their list.
As it turns out these things are far less universal than they want you to believe. The 'universality' is achieved by using coded tips that tell the power supply what voltage to use and then wire it to a connector, they come with 10 tips for supposedly the most common models. So far so good. I found a connector that fit the SPARCbook but unfortunately it gave me 16V so I went to Targus' website in order to find a tip that works and that's where the trouble began.
Their website gives no technical ( or rather, useful ) information whatsoever. All you get is either pictures of the tips with no information or a searchable list of laptop models, devices etc., if your laptop isn't listed you're out of luck. After some fruitless searching I finally sent a message to their technical support - after all they should know what they're selling and surely there's another laptop out there that needs the same connector and voltage, it's not like Tadpole didn't use standard parts wherever possible.
Well, the answer I got is responsible for this post's headline - quite possible the most useless response I ever got from any 'technical' support ever. They told me I'm out of luck if my laptop isn't listed and they wouldn't recommend plugging it in with 16V. No attempt at solving the problem at all, just ha-ha we got your money now bugger off.
Well, they're not going to get any further business from me, even if some day I need a power supply for a laptop that is on their list.
