Twenty Something Sense

As a frequent traveler I find myself often times wandering any given airport looking behind rows of seats, around pillars and in random hall-ways for those beautiful silver plates with black faces which will give power to my laptop, mobile phone, etc.  Yes, I am that guy that everyone think is looking for a place to plant a bomb, but is really just trying to get some juice in order to get on the internet.

So, the question stands, why is there no power at the airport?  I have seen over the past couple of years futile attempts to fix this by having a row (8 stools) of space where there are outlets, or a pod where there are 3 outlets, but nothing to handle the demand of an airport.  I was most recently in the Boston airport and came upon a great setup (see pictures below).  Ironically, none of the power outlets worked.  Brilliant! 

I’m not suggesting that airports should simple give power away for free – I do realize that this costs money and certainly has maintenance costs associated with it as well.  However, I am willing to be that nearly everyone is willing to pay for power!

Would you pay $1 to have your laptop plugged in for an hour?  You get the enjoyment of using your laptop for an hour and it gets re-charged for that 9 hour flight over-seas.  Seems like a fair deal to me.  So why isn’t anyone cashing in on this idea?  Am I missing something?  Am I the only one searching for an outlet like its a pot of gold?