help colette with her first ever UK/US plug dilemma

The UK voltage is 240V, whereas European is usually 220V, so if the adapter was made by a cheap company that assumed it would only be in used in 220V countries, that could maybe be the problem. Could also be a miswiring in the adapter, and a bunch of other things. Just try a new adapter.

:( good luck, the only help I can offer is to post some pictures of butt plugs or something.

hopefully the power adpator/transformer was external not internal otherwise the printer is toast, I'm afraid. If it's external just getyourself to maplins and get yourself an appropropriately specced power adaptor. IT should not have blown your house electrics though. That's something that you might want to raise with your landlord, that sounds unsafe. (Unless your Landlord has fitted an RCD to your bog standard ring main, which I doubt)

Describehow this printer gets power, or better yet gove a make and model.

try changing the fuse for the plug of the surge protector too.

> The UK voltage is 240V

i don't think this is true, not anymore. i remember stories a while back about how UK mains voltage has been decreased and how this could mean that microwaves aren't cooking food properly anymore and people should be careful. no idea how you'd find this out though.

http://www.googlism.com/what_is/u/uk_mains_voltage/ seems to give a range of alternatives. http://oem.ansmann.de/en/s_mains-voltage.html says we've standardised with the rest of europe on 230V.

where's the plasticky smoke coming from, the printer or the surge protector?

230V is the standard now however 230V is just an average it fluctuates within agreed tolerances. The microwave story was just one of those stupid straight banana/sausage stories that the tabloids put about to badmouth the EU which standardised the whole continent on 230V, UK and ireland dropping from 240V and the rest of europe coming up from 220V.

Three prongs is good.

even if microwaves didn't have sophisticated circuitry to control the power output the change in power would be of the order of 4%, or more than the difference between a 650W microwave and an 800W microwave.

Stop! Please! I get enough discussion of the fluctuations in the National Grid at home! Argh! My eyes!

(Oh yes, Ed, do you still want to go to that Vintage Electronics Fair thing with HSA?)

when is it?

I don't actually know. It might be in October, but that might also be the Antique Medical Equipment Festival. Can I pass along your phone number to him, and you two can sort out if you want to go?

> Stop! Please! I get enough discussion of the fluctuations in the National Grid at home! Argh! My eyes!

apologies for talking about voltage differences in a thread so obviously about, er, voltage differences. or did you think colette was having trouble keeping the water in her bath? 8)

colette i blew up my canadian HP CD burner this way. same popping sound. same smell. the power bar/socket/fuse in my place were all fine, but the cheap adapter and burner - toast.

don't dixons or PC World or places like that have US/UK converters-a-plenty? i recall most places along tottenham court road as well. a proper one should be heavy, and probably not very cheap.

ok, i've had too much cava to deal with this tonight, but i really really appreciate all the tips. i think it's an hp photosmart 240 or something like that. i really hope it isn't toast. popping and smell seemed to come from power strip/adaptor. but i'm too scared to plug in the printer to see if it works until i get a better adaptor.

but then again, my parents are visiting. can i just send it back with them, have them return it saying 'i dunno, it just doesn't work!' (and guess that the jackass at compUSA won't know why) and get a new one?

can anyone link to the right and proper and not cheap-ass adaptors that i should be using? i'll be crying if the same thing happened to my ipod or my laptop.

thanks a million, i'll try to sort this all out on return from denmark...

Most power converters have a wattage limit... you probably went over it and blew the fuse. Like when my aunt plugged her hair dryer into my cheap low wattage converter when I was in Israel last year.

So, uh, the power coverter probably says how many watts it can handle, as will your printer. Obviously, get a converter which can handle a higher wattage than the uh appliance in question.