USB Vacuum Cleaner

Not sufficient to do anything useful.

Why bother, when you can buy one for less than what it would cost you to make one?

Here's one example:

http://www.opentip.com/Custom-Orders/Usb-Vacuum-Cleaner-p-2813383.html

Are you sure it is actually a vacuum cleaner seen many air blower like this.

Yes, "vacuum" would be a gross exaggeration on those things, it's essentially a blower in reverse. It will pick up dust, but not much else, besides sucking money out of your wallet.

It's better And cheaper to just learn to eat somewhere other than in front of your computer.

How about a tiny USB powered fridge?

This one keeps cans of chewing tobacco cool... huh?

We discussed these here.

Since the standard USB port has only 2.5W of power available, you are not going to generate a lot of vacuum with that!

Tom D.

So let me guess its not a good idea to buy a USB powered vacuum cleaner or fridge. But a USB port can power an external speaker,charge a cellphone,cool a laptop etc.

"But a USB port can power an external speaker,charge a cellphone,cool a laptop etc."

Small speaker, yes.

Slow cell phone charge, yes.

Tiny little muffin fans, yes.

Tiny little LED light for your keyboard, yes.

Anything else, not really.

I have a lovely little USB powered vacuum cleaner for my laptop. I received it as a gift. It's only been out of the box once. It even incorporates a natty little LED light to help you to see what it is not picking up!

I learned the hard way.

I have a 4 port USB hub expander. When I needed one, I saw that I had a choice of one that has a separate input for another Power Supply, and one that is powered by the USB port itself. In the days before I thought of checking what kind of power was available off the port, I figured "Why pay extra and have another stupid wall-wart to deal with?", so I bought the cheaper port powered version.

The problem with the self-powered port expander is, I cannot plug in more than one thing that uses port power anyway, so it is almost useless. For example I have a wireless mouse for my desktop PC and the base station is powered by its own separate power supply. I can plug that in, along with something else, to that port expander with no problem. But another wirelss mouse I have for my laptop is port powered. If I try to use the port powered mouse on my laptop that is plugged into the expander, AND the port powered external floppy drive, AND the cool little fan that is port powered, I mess everything up because I overload the USB port.

I burned out 2 of the 3 USB ports on my laptop as a result before I thought to look into it.

That's a bummer. Tell me what brand of laptop so I don't buy it! We have USB ports on some of our newer equipment, and the power on those is always protected by a "polymer" resettable fuse, or a dedicated USB power IC that limits the current. That sucks that they didn't design for USB power overload on that laptop!

Tom D.

It's a Compaq, from right after HP bought them and they were still using the name and parallel marketing. No wonder they didn't survive...

Yes.