Gladly the industry seems to be (slowly) standardizing on micro-USB plugs, except for laptops. That means nowadays I only have to carry two bricks with me (MicroUSB + Macbook charger).
Personally I'd really love if everyone moved to a common MicroUSB MagSafe form-factor. But apparently there are some patents in the way...
> Gladly the industry seems to be (slowly) standardizing on micro-USB plugs, except for laptops
Largely because the EU pretty much threatened the cell phone manufacturers with heavy regulation unless they came up with some sort of standard. Since they "have" to do micro-USB for the EU, they might as well do it everywhere.
Unfortunately power is still a problem. While there is part of the standard for power, Apple went the other way so high power chargers have to support Apple or open standards but not both. Todays tablets have very high capacity batteries (and they keep getting bigger) so various manufacturers have been going proprietary again in order to increase power from the charger (Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is an example).
Here is a post showing someone trying to get a standards following USB charger:
Personally I'd really love if everyone moved to a common MicroUSB MagSafe form-factor. But apparently there are some patents in the way...