The one gripe I have about all Dell notebooks is that the power cords which come with them are too short. They always seem to be just a foot or two short of where I want to sit 80% of the time.

At first I looked to see if Dell had longer power adapters – they don’t, BTW – but also realized that this wasn’t the best solution anyway – I just wanted to extend the part of the power cord which went from the brick to the wall – could I do this?

As it turns out – absolutely!

After a lot of hunting around I found out that the 3-circle connector which goes to the brick is a standard known as a ’3-SLOT’ or ‘Mickey Mouse’ adapter (because the three circles resemble Mickey’s head and ears). It wasn’t easy to track down, but I finally found the 6ft 3-Slot Laptop Power Cable by Startech.

In my case, it was twice as long as my previous cord and worked perfectly. Now I have the extra foot or two I always seem to need and then some, without needing to lug around a general purpose extension cord.