{"id":5154,"date":"2013-09-18T00:01:03","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T07:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5154"},"modified":"2013-09-20T17:51:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-21T00:51:39","slug":"overseas-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5154","title":{"rendered":"Overseas Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe 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&#8217;t think of things like that in your own country, where it&#8217;s assume that any electronics you buy plugs into any available wall socket, but overseas things work differently.<\/p>\n<p>The image in Figure 1 was stolen from the <a href=\"http:\/\/wikitravel.org\/en\/Electrical_systems\" target=\"_blank\">WikiTravel page on overseas electrical systems<\/a>. It gives a summary of what type of power is used around the world. Figure 2 shows the various plug styles.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5176\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5176\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/map.png\" alt=\"Figure 1. Electrical systems map.\" width=\"400\" height=\"288\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/map.png 400w, https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/map-300x216.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5176\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. Electrical systems map.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_5177\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5177\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/sockets.png\" alt=\"Figure 2. Power socket designs &#039;round the world.\" width=\"400\" height=\"374\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5177\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/sockets.png 400w, https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/sockets-300x280.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5177\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2. Power socket designs &#8217;round the world.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>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!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5155\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5155\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/69040084.jpeg\" alt=\"Figure 1. Plugging in en France.\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5155\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/69040084.jpeg 640w, https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/69040084-300x225.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5155\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. Plugging in en France.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In Figure 3, you see the adapter I used to make the connection. It&#8217;s basically a plastic doohickey I slipped onto the plug.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t need a power converter; those are expensive, and they&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please do take your laptop or tablet with you as you travel abroad. Re-charging the device is not a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,16],"class_list":["post-5154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-android","tag-laptop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5154"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5210,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5154\/revisions\/5210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}