Everyday we see and read about more new gadgets that are smaller, thinner and sleeker being introduced. We are also promised a world without wires and total freedom of movement and therefore enjoyment of our new gadgets.

As your article said sooner or later no matter how long-lived the batteries are, these gadgets will run out of juice and will have to be charged and invariably that means wires, power adapters and transformers.

My family and I have recently returned from a longhaul holiday. Together we had a Motorola, a Sony Ericsson mobile phone and an O2 XDA. We also had an Olympus mini Mju, a Casio S-600 (both of which can only be charged with its cradle) and a Sony handycam.

To top that off we brought along an Archos AV700 to store our digital photos in case we ran out of memory cards, an mp3 player and a Bluetooth headset because my dearly beloved is such a law abiding citizen that he would not get behind a steering wheel without one wherever he might be.

All in there were 6 power chargers, two cradles and their power sockets, one mini transformer and its power socket collectively weighing over 2kg. I also travel with a 5-socket power strip because in most hotel rooms I find that there will only be one spare power point.

My grouse number one is why can’t manufacturers get together and make their adapters the same so that we can charge our gadgets with just one or two chargers. Even USB cables, which are supposed to be 'universal' do not all the same type of interfaces as in the case of our Casio and Olympus cameras.

Grouse number two is, if we have to carry all these adapters around with us, why can’t they make the wires retractable into the head of the sockets so I don’t have to spend a few minutes painstakingly winding them up, tying and bagging them up individually so that I don’t end up with a tangled mess at the end of our journey.

Every time you go buy a new gadget you marvel at the how small or thin the manufacturers have managed to make them. After you have struck a bargain, the sales assistant will go to the backroom or wherever and come back with a box at least half the size of a shoebox. Plonked right in the middle of the box would be this beautiful new, sleek, wonderfully thin new gadget surrounded by all its ugly accompaniments most notably a power charger equal to or twice its size with its equally abhorrent wire attached.

Dear manufacturers of all things small and beautiful, have a thought for those of us who have to be responsible for the nitty, gritty part of our lives and please allocate a bigger portion of your R&D budget to making these power adapters smaller, come with retractable wires or best of all make them universal as in UNIVERSAL. I am sure that is not too much to ask.

Amy Cooper