[Millennium]

I have an old Ti/400 that I still use on a daily basis. It works great, but I have a problem that's been plaguing me ever since I got the thing: the power cords. I just bought my fourth. The first and third broke at the place where the cable meets the plug which goes into the PowerBook itself. The second one died when the prong on the cable actually broke off inside the PowerBook (which led to me having to send the whole thing in for repairs), but its cord had begun to fray at this exact same point, so I don't believe it would have lasted for much longer anyway.

Power adaptors cost about $80 each, and have since The Beginning. Do the math, and you can see why I'm interested in seeing if I can get my fourth and newest power cable to last for more than a year. Does anyone have any tips?

[John123]

Yeah, AppleCare.

Not to be glib or anything. It's saved me a ton of money over the years for precisely this reason.

Unfortunately, you obviously don't have this luxury. Apple has addressed part of the problem by changing the design of the power adapters. You'll notice that the current ones have more reinforcement toward the plug-in tip and especially in the area where the cord goes into the square brick (it used to go in there without any additional insulation -- yuck).

The only thing you can do is avoid doing things to bend or angle your adapter. Like anything plastic, stress will cause it to wear down. The more you can use your PowerBook in such a way that you aren't bending the plug-in areas back and forth, the better off you'll be.

[wilsonng]

I found a 3rd party power adapter at MCE for about $40.00.

http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/m...=ACCACAUTOADPT

The brick portion is a little bigger and uglier than Apple's but the rubber casing around it appears to be thicker.

One of my friends used Gaffer's tape and wrapped it around the plastic shell at the power plug. This helps him get a better grip when he pulls his powr card.

I always try to remember to grab it by the plastic shell surrounding the tip instead of trying to yank at the cord. I think this is what stressed out my old Apple cords.

[guywithFX]

i know this is kinda out there and may sound totally nuts, but you could take a hot glue gun and put it right around where the cord and the connector meet to create that missing stability where the 2 come together.