adaptor woes

I suck at using adaptors. I blow them up left, right and center. It never takes more than a month usually. And this is irrespective of the gadget, incase u thought that was the problem. And it isnt the place either. It never mattered whether i was at home or in my room in the hostel. I've even stopped counting how many, because it hurts. So recently when I annihilated another one (which i use for the speakers on my pc), I decided this has gone far enuf.

Finally, i sat down to think if i was doing something wrong (something i shud've done much earlier). Was i not adjusting the voltage right? Not possible. Only 2 out of all those zillion adapters had a provision for multiple voltage. So all i ever had to do was plug the damn things in. How wrong could i have gotten doing that? Or is it the way i use these gadgets? Do i leave them on for too long? Definitely not more than my friends do.

The analysis wasn't getting anywhere. I decided to get a little professional. I checked up how these things work and what makes them go up in smoke usually. That's when i discovered that they are also referred to as 'wall warts'. Now, I did know that all adapters come with a rating and its not very nice to let them function at voltages or current very different form the rated ones. What i did not know was that there is no standard for rating AC adapters. When a particular adapter is listed as, say, 12 V, 1 A max, there's a good chance the output will average 12 V when outputting 1 A but what it does at lower currents is not known. In fact, lightly loaded, the output voltage may be more than double its nameplate rating! I can't thank my stars enuf for keeping my speakers safe!

So, it seems that manufacutrers test their adapters mainly for the equipment that they are supposed to be used with.

Now that was the problem. After blowing up the first adapter of my speakers, i started plugging in every other adapter i found with the same rating. Turns out that this is not a very good practice.

So there. Now I do have a vague idea of why I dont have adapter friendly hands, but i still have no clue as to what i can do about it.