My retail company is considering buying a surge protector from a supplier with 5 plug outlets that also has a USB connection. The idea is that you plug all your peripherals into the surge protector and the USB into your computer and when you shutdown your computer the USB triggers a switch in the surge protector that switches off the peripherals thus saving you from having to switch off each peripheral at the wall.
My problem with it is that when used with my Mac Mini it doesn't work because the USB ports are still active when the Mac is shutdown. This means that the USB wont tell the surge protector to shut down and the peripherals will stay switched on. All of the computers I have used in the office don't have live USB ports when they are shut down so the product works, but these are all the same type of Dell and so I would expect the same result.
I know it is the motherboard that controls where power goes but what I really need to know is what percentage of computers on the market have active USB ports in shutdown mode. I have done an extensive search online to find an approximate figure but can't find any useful information. If the percentage is over 20% then I don't think we should sell the product as we will get high returns.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this or could make an informed guess?
Cheers
Steve
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