When traveling abroad, you can sate your need for power not with an aircraft carrier, but with a simple piece of plastic called a power adapter.

The world lacks a single standard for the type of electricity that comes out of the wall. Different countries use different voltages, but also different types of plugs. You don’t think of things like that in your own country, where it’s assume that any electronics you buy plugs into any available wall socket, but overseas things work differently.

The image in Figure 1 was stolen from the WikiTravel page on overseas electrical systems. It gives a summary of what type of power is used around the world. Figure 2 shows the various plug styles.

Figure 1. Electrical systems map.

Figure 2. Power socket designs ’round the world.

Laptops, cell phones, and tablets are low-power devices. As such, the standard charger works in Europe. All you need is an adapter to plug it into the European style wall sockets. In Figure 3 you see me connecting my IBM laptop to a power strip in France. It worked!

Figure 1. Plugging in en France.

In Figure 3, you see the adapter I used to make the connection. It’s basically a plastic doohickey I slipped onto the plug.

You don’t need a power converter; those are expensive, and they’re required for high-amp devices such as a hair dryer or electric razor. But for anything you need to charge, from a laptop to a digital camera, a socket adapter is all you need. Easy peasy.