The computers-in-the-family-room situation is driving me nuts.
We currently have one desktop computer, one printer and one laptop sharing a six foot table with the networking gear (hub, dsl modem, wireless access point) and miscellaneous other computer junk (palm pilot hot sync thingie, digital camera cables, etc). This mess is all cabled together in what seems to be a completely connected graph. There are three surge protectors just for all the power points.
All the cable management solutions I’ve seen seem to assume that your cables all start at one place and all wind up at some other place so that you can neatly fit them inside a tube. My cables are all going every which a way, criss crossing each other. I have no idea how to get this mess under control.
Argh.
Amen! I hate tangled cords and wires too. There has to be a way to get organized. If you figure it out, let me know, OK?
Jeff says he has a two-word suggestion: velcro straps. It was the best way to get a rats nest of cables under control, especially when they didn’t all go one way from one place. He just put bits about every two feet, but you can pick which ones to bind together and how often to strap ’em together. The nice thing too is that it’s easy to undo and redo.
I got a bunch of cable ties, stacked the networking junk together, managed to divide the cables into three major hunks, tied them down every couple inches. Now it’s much neater, there’s absolutely no flexibility, and my wireless connection keeps dropping out every couple minutes. Darn. I should have gone with the Velcro. My sister swears by CableClamps.
Informative article!!!!