There is nothing I hate more than cables and wires that clutter up my work space. I have been a big proponent of the bluetooth keyboard and mouses. With my iMac, I have no cables in sight, bar the lone iPhone charger. Nevertheless, I still keep looking for ways to reduce the clutter, and I found this Refresh, well, refreshing. It is made by a design firm called Bluelounge, and they actually specialize in well-designed work space and Mac accessories.
At $90, it is not too expensive as a personal charging station for all sorts of phones and devices, and it can charge up to three devices at the same time. In addition to Refresh, Cablebox, a $30 device that hides the mess of wires near your desk, appeals to my aesthetic. If you have used it, share your feedback. Any other recommendations? Keep me posted.
My experience with cables – and the transformer blocks – is that there are so many devices that require those transformers that they cannot all be hidden from view. Just the number of cables attached to the rear of my Mac Pro is enough to make one just accept the jungle.
“Two devices”
Just a minute! Refresh requires plug-in cables / connectors, and it will gather dust. What people need is a device that will charge without having to plug in a cable. Those eventually become too loose to maintain conductivity. I am waiting for chargers and phones that work together without the need for anything attached to the phone. Same for iPods.
Refresh looks pretty good solution to me. Take a look at other pictures on their website and u will see that it can hide and replace a lot of chargers.
iMac has solved most of my problems, no wires needed 🙂
I have a lot of USB devices but only two ports in my MacBook. I got some cheap USB hub device that allows up to 7 USB devices to travel down one USB cable, however it doesn’t seem to function quite correctly. Everything connected through it seems a bit slower and it sometimes randomly disconnects which can be annoying when my time machine is syncing or something. Do you have any recommendations to solve this? I would just like to have one cable that I connect to my mac that would connect to all my other devices (mouse, printer, external hard drive etc). There is nothing more annoying than too many cables all over you desk. Nice post
Are you sure it is USB 2.0? I had a hub, and transferring files from my daughter’s PowerBook to a flash drive using the hub took a LONG time. It turned out it was USB 1.0, not 2.0.
However, you could have a defective hub. My INLAND hub cost about $14 and has seven outlets, each of which has a LED to identify that it is connected. It also requires a separate power supply, so the power is always there. That’s the only type to use for a hub.
Yeah i’m pretty sure its USB 2.0, I think it might just be a really cheap piece of equipment I was using. I’ll have a look at the INLAND hub, that sounds much better. I’m sure the external power supply makes quite a bit of difference, and hopefully stop it from randomly disconnecting. Thanks for the advice
I’ve never been a fan of cable “boxes”. Yes, cables are ugly, but I’m not a fan of anything that I think might wind up trapping heat inside…
Those are both great but for the price you can get from belkin what we use in our office and it includes the surge protector and 100k coverage. http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=400729