Dealing with Laptop Cables

Cramit

I have laptop and being a geek I have cables to connect it to anything. I am getting frustrated with having the equivalent of a ball of cable in my laptop bag. I started to look on google and the two most promising solutions I found were the Cable Turtle and the Cord-It retractable cable manager. Have any of you used products like these, or do you have any solutions to the "ball-o-cable" problem?

Apreche

The only cable my laptop has is the AC adapter. I bought an extra AC adapter, so I have one at work and one at home. So I only carry the laptop itself on a daily basis. When I go on trips to conventions or such, and I need to bring cables, I have a compartment in one of my duffel bags that I just stuff all the cables into them.

So ask yourself, are you really using all of these cables on a regular basis? Do you really need to carry them all around with you all the time? Only carry cables around if there's a chance you will need them. Leave the rest at home. Also, use bluetooth and wireless as much as possible.

Cramit

Most of the cable I carry with me are for hooking my laptop up to TV's or monitors. I use those relatively often and usually with little or no notice. I have been the life saver of a class on more then one occasion by having those cables. I also keep a micro-USB cable around to connect my external hard-drive and digital camera to my computer as needed. Again I do not often have notice when I will have to move files around or want to look at the pictures I just took with a group of friends.

When traveling I bring an iPod cable and a Cable to charge my phone. I travel quite a bit so these are in my bag about 50% of the time. The iPod Cable is one of the worst about tangling itself up with other cords.

Apreche

Wow, weird. My experience with video cables has always been completely different. Usually when I'm going to hook my laptop up to something, it's a projector of some kind. When there is a projector, usually the people providing it realize that laptops are going to be plugged into it, and the VGA cable is at the ready.

As for external hard drive and camera. I don't use an external hard drive, I use a thumb drive. I also use Flickr to put all my pictures on the net. If I just took a picture and I want to see it on my laptop, I take the SD card out and put it in my laptop's SD slot. This also works if there is a Wii or PS3 on hand because they both also have SD slots.

iPod cable I used to use, but I just sync my iPod before I leave the house. During travel I mostly only use my iPod in the car where it gets charged. If I somehow run out of things to listen to, my car had a 6CD changer that I haven't changed the discs in in a very long time. I also charge my phone in the car.

Again, if I were really going on a long trip sans-car, I would take all my necessary cables and put them in a duffel bag. However, through my use of wireless, SD card slot, keeping cables at work, and putting most of my data on the net, I am able to avoid having to carry around lots of cables. I carry what I need, when I need it.

There are many solutions for reducing the pain of carrying cables around. After you reduce your cable load as much as possible, replacing your cables with retractable equivalents is a good first step. After that, I suggest you look into get a more efficient bag of some sort. If you have a good bag, the cables will be less burdensome and won't get tangled.