I've been ranting on and off for at least ten years in the pages of PCW about the need for a universal smart power supply that renders multiple power adapters obsolete. We take plug-and-play more or less for granted in most other devices and there is no technical reason why the principle should not be extended to power supplies.

The client device would store information on its power needs in a form that could be read by the smart supply, which would then configure itself accordingly.

Now my colleague Iain Tomson reports from CES that a California-based Green Plug has developed software to do this and it is being built into a power supply from a company called Innergie.

Whether it will succeed or not is another matter  because the issue really needs to be addressed across the industry, which has shown no interest to date. Perhaps people are making too much money out of dumb adaptors, and notoriously some companies like to lock in users by insisting on proprietary connectors.

I once earbashed Intel technology chief Pat Gelsinger on the subject but he brushed my question aside.

The nearest we have to a universal DC supply now are the USB port, which currently delivers a maximum of 2.5W at 5v, and Power-over-Ethernet which gives around 13W at 48v. The latest USB 3.0 spec allows boosts the maximum power it can deliver to around 4.5W - still not enough for many devices.

The PoE roadmap points to a maximum 60w in the future but fire regulations and the need to cool cabinets may preclude retrofitting that kind of power.

Shortly before Christmas a group called the Wireless Power Consortium formed to develop a standard for wireless delivery of power. Members include Fulton Innovation, Logitech, National Semiconductor, Philips, Sanyo, Shenzhen Sang Fei Consumer Communications, and Texas Instruments.

The power would be delivered inductively, like in any transformer except that the primary and secondary windings would be in separate devices. But initial plans are for a maximum power of only five watts - not enough even for a small laptop.

Wireless power sounds like it would be inefficient but it does get round the problem of deciding which power connectors to use. I've yet to see how Green Plug gets round that one but I very much look forward to seeing the Innergie power supply, expected to be available this summer.

This weekend I'll no doubt be playing with the new Windows 7 beta. I've had no chance this week because I got my new year deadlines wrong and had to produce my print pages in half my normal time.

I finally installed Win7 from a downloaded .iso this afternoon (Friday) on a spare partition on a Vista machine as I didn't want to overwrite a working system. The install routine set-up a dual boot without my asking, offering me a choice of Vista or Windows 7 at boot-up.

The only trouble is that it calls the boot partition C: and can't see the partition holding the unused operating system. The Vista partition also holds my applications and so they too are out of bounds.