Cables

Power

There are a wide variety of power cables available for computers. Low power items such as digital camera chargers use an IEC C7 or commonly known as a figure of eight connector. Laptops IEC C5 or clover leaf connector and finally computers, printers and monitors almost always use an IEC C13 or kettle lead (but kettles actually use a slightly different variant of the IEC C13, the IEC C15 which is rated to a higher amperage).

There are a third three which are far less common, the C3 which is very uncommon and only included here for completeness. The IEC C15 which is a true kettle lead and designed for a higher amperage load and finally the C19 which is typically used on higher power UPS devices.

Power connectors are always male at the power source and female at the device, simplest to think about how if it was the other way you’d be able to touch live pins and electrocute yourself.

USB

There are many types of USB cable, many are a common standard whilst others are proprietary such as the USB A to Apple Lightening.

Pretty much all computers feature the USB A sockets, these come in three standards USB 1 (pretty much a dead standard), USB 2 which is common on almost all computers and USB 3 which has a blue insert inside the socket that provides much faster speeds.

USB 3 devices are typically backwardly compatible with USB 2, in turn USB 2 is backwardly compatible with USB 1 – all that changes is the data transfer speed.