So, I’ve had two power supplies blow on me in the last 6 months, for different things. My wireless router died, and my home laptop’s power died a couple of days ago.

This strikes me as very wrong. It’s not like they had to do anything complicated – they’re just transformers. The technology has been understood for a long time. I mean, batteries are one thing, but transformers?

The complication then comes that there are dozens of almost identical connectors, and finding out what connector you had is hard work.

So, couldn’t electronics companies build better power supplies? With fewer ‘standard’ connectors (and none of this proprietry bollocks like some laptop manufacturers use – there’s no need)? And perhaps some system of colour coding, or at least documentation of what the connector is? Would that be too much to ask?