The power issue aside, a colleague of mine recently had a major house fire, started by a mobile phone charger. The phone wasn't connected at the time, but the charger was still plugged in.

I know the probability of this is small, but when you can rule it out completely for very little effort, why take the chance? May as well unplug it - if it's accessible, of course.

A few years ago I had a job where I helped prepare the annual report to "corporate responsibility" committee of the board of directors. This is exactly the sort of silly stuff that goes in that report, and the directors eat it up.

When the charging is completed the charger cools down to less than hand-warm. It's still not entirely cold, so I guess it's using a fraction of a watt. But as all my heating is done by electricity anyway (no gas or oil) it doesn't matter one bit at all, even if it used fifty watts.

But I don't leave anything plugged in at home when I leave the building, unless it's unavoidable. Had a fire once, fortunately when people were looking directly at it when it started.

I plugged the power supply into my Kill-a-watt meter and recorded the following readings:

Power supply plugged in without N800 connected: 0.0 watts 0.00 amps
Power supply charging N800 with a 3 hour in use charge left: 5 Watts .07 amps
Power supply plugged into N800, charging complete: 0.0 watts 0.00 amps

Heh, so much for the pop-up message! (which I guess is an OS2008 feature, I don't see one in OS2007.) So not only are Nokia's paper user manuals (for phones and tablets) obsolete (they talk about batteries as if they were NiHM batteries), now they continue with the software itself.. so the modern Nokia charger consumes 0.00 amps when idle, while my older, heavier Nokia charger (for my old phone) is lukewarm at idle (indeed I was incorrect in my earlier posting, I was clearly thinking of my old 3.7 volt Nokia charger, not the N800 5V charger).

i had a fire once started by a wall wart. dont be stupid you lazy farts. you are literally playing with fire.

i unplug the warts or turn off power bar once changed. especially when leaving house.


i am sure no one cares or gives a rats damn. you sometimes have to get burnt before you learn your lesson. thats human nature for you. been like that for millions of years.

I've simply 2 power strips in my "pc corner" with a nice big switch and power surge protection, one for alway's on devices (NAS and adsl) and one for the rest... configured in my pc's to boot on getting power. only one switch and all boot... very handy and saves me $$ (or better euro's)...
Maybe the Nxx power supply is really "clean" but screen's, pc's and power adaptors for scanner/laptop/usb disks/... really use about 100 wat electricity when "off".
Additionally bonus: when all off (like on holliday or weekend out or thunder coming over) I have nothing to worrie about...

Maybe "green" is for some people for sissies, but do you also throw every day a dollar in the garbage can?

I too use that kind of power strip, most of the time. Also handy to bring in suitcase when travelling -- sometimes there's only a single outlet in the hotel room, and if you need a plug converter you'll only need one.

I'm sure fires have started because of plugged-in refrigerators as well.

They have. But there's a reason (other than laziness) for leaving the fridge plugged in!