Are they uncommon now? Gotorazor makes a very good point that portable electronics might be plugged in in more places, and therefore you're less likely to ensure every one of these sockets are surfer protected. But my desktop PC and my TV and consoles are all connected to surge protected sockets. Perhaps I'm a bit old fashioned and fussy!
Unfortunately yes. As a Brit living in America, every time I have to deal with a plug socket I feel ever so slightly like I'm about to electrocute myself. Sure, the big bulky plugs are a pain to carry around, but at least I felt safe using them.
Being more concerned about fire safety than surge suppression, I've always been bothered by the cheap construction of the outlets in most of these products. So, for a while I've only been buying the TrippLite isobar and industrial/hospital-grade products.
They exist and just have cleverly designed housings that shield both pins and sockets. But it would be a bad idea for household power as it wouldn’t prevent you from doing things such as short two outlets together.
I do think sockets should be fundamentally redesigned from the ones we have here in the US. There are so many, better examples in use around the world. One small plus is that most of our outlets are only 110v, which is somewhat safer to deal with.
I don't get what is the point of this submission? Just looks like a brand of regular sockets.
Is it about the modularity of the socket? Is this somehow a "new" concept for people in the North America or Europe? If yes, than that is really strange type of exceptionalism, here in Brazil modularity has been the standard for almost 30 years, you just buy the shields (with 1,2,3,4,or 6 slots) and whatever modules you want (light switches, power sockets, telecom sockets, etc). You would actually find it hard to find a non-modular socket in a hardware store.
What I'm most afraid of about some smart sockets is that I can find various weird brands of them on Amazon, looking exactly the same, rated for wildly different amperages.
I get it in my apartment (I live in the U.S.) which is brand new with 3 prong sockets if I have my feet on the ground (concrete floor) while roughing the laptop.
I've experienced it a few more times at different peoples houses as well.
That's an interesting point about using a different plug and socket. Perhaps this would be a good time to deploy IEC 60083 Type G plugs, which were carefully designed for safety at higher voltages? They already see some use, so there is an existing supply chain for plugs, sockets, adapters, etc.
> I continue to be amazed how many devices still ship with only two prong plugs (everywhere: Europe, North America, Australia...) even if those prongs are polarized
Because most devices these days have plastic cases (Class II double insulated), so there's nothing metal to touch to get shocked even in the case of a fault. That coupled with how GFCI/RCDs are being widely adopted as well leads to grounding not being as important.
Ok, so it has gotten a little better, but having lived in close proximity to Americans in Africa and so buying their appliances second hand, etc, there were all to many cases of people accidentally switching plugs. PC Power supplies used to also be manually switcheable - no autodetect (atleast the ones we had access to in Africa), guessing that's changed.
The dangerous examples were cords that didn't have the right end or had changed ends so that you could hook a 110V appliance to a 220 outlet.
Never mind that with the older plugs, the cables were basically passive. But now there has to be special resistors in them to signal what kind of power delivery they can handle, and oh so many companies get it wrong. Because there is also a special resistor that need to be used if you have a A to C cable, that overrules all the others.
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