Receiving Wall Warts

What it is

"Wall warts" are what we call the small power supplies that power printers, speakers, scanners and other electronic devices that require separate power sources, but don't have a built-in cord.

How to identify it

The basic types of wall warts we deal with:

• Printer Power Supplies
  • Will generally be rectangular, black or beige, and bear known printer brand names, but the ones we primarily keep will say HP on the back of the supply. These are also known as "bricks", because of the shape. Save any printer power supply that is plugged into the back of a printer, though.
• Speaker Power Supplies
  • These are generally small, square, black or beige, and bear known speaker brand names. We save anything that says Altec Lansing, Bose, Boston Acoustics, Creative, GE, Harmon Kardon, JBL, Kensington, Labtec, Logitech, Maxell, NEC, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, TDK, ViewSonic, or Yamaha. There are other brands, but these are the big ones. The really big names to be aware of? We see more Altec Lansing, Creative, Harmon Kardon, Logitech, and Yamaha brand speakers than anything else.
• Telephone Power Supplies
  • These are generally smaller, black or beige, and will generally say Telephone Power Supply. If they don't, rely on the common brand names, which are AT&T, Bell, Motorola, Panasonic, Plantronics, Sony, and Uniden.
• Laptop Power Supplies
  • These will also be rectangular, generally black, and will bear the names of known laptop manufacturers. Common brands you'll see around will be Acer, Apple, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM, Microsoft, NEC, Sony and Toshiba.

Dell and Compaq also make speakers, but because they make laptops as well, pretty much save ANYTHING that says Dell or Compaq. DO NOT CLIP LAPTOP POWER SUPPLIES; if you think it MIGHT be a laptop power supply, or a printer supply (both long black or beige rectangles, with a cord coming off each end) DO NOT CLIP IT.

Special notes

1. Do not remove power supplies that come in with speakers; bag up both speakers and power supply and send them over to Speaker Test.
2. Printer power supplies and laptop power supplies should be put in the Printerland bin or the Black Hole bin, respectively.

How to put it into the database

"Wall warts" are not labeled separately; they're just saved or clipped.

Where it goes

Map to Printerland

Printer power supplies go to Printerland; wrap the cords around the power supplies and throw them in the Printerland bin on the lower left hand side of the Reuse shelf in Receiving.

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Map to the Black Hole

Laptop power supplies go to the Black Hole; wrap the cords around the power supplies and throw them in the Black Hole bin on the third Reuse shelf down on the right hand side.