Dan Butler's
TNPC Newsletter

A Cheap Solution to the "Rat's Nest of Cable" Problem

by Lee Hudspeth

I made several resolutions earlier this year. Among them: (1) keep my office tidy and (2) make it easier to connect/disconnect, access, re-position, and generally fiddle with my PCs. That meant finding a solution to the dreaded but ubiquitous "rat's nest of cable" problem. Find one I did.

You know what I mean by the term "rat's nest of cable," right? Just look at the back of your PC and start tracing the wires around and under and over... Imagine what a mess it would be to quickly replace a keyboard, install a new mouse, run a new Ethernet coax, re-connect everything through a UPS box, or just move a PC from one end of a desk to the other. (Lucky me, I've done all this stuff and more so far this year.) This problem is exacerbated geometrically with every new PC you add to your office network. Oh sure, you can do it. But if you find yourself -- like me -- having to do these operations over and over again, you'll long for a simple way to keep these cables arranged so that removing or re-routing one among the many doesn't involve hair-pulling or (gasp) cable-cutting.

My first instinct was to open up my prodigious tool kit bag and start wrapping everything up with traditional cable ties, available at about ten cents a piece in a variety of lengths and colors at your local hardware store. Tidy? Yes. Easy to remove or replace one cable from among them all? No way. But the mental image of cable ties wrapped around at regular intervals segued into the image of a virtual conduit. So while aisle-browsing at my local computer discount store the solution hit me. A huge display of Curtis cable organizers and locking cable clips caught my eye.

The locking cable clips (part no. CO2) are totally cool. I used them to create a virtual conduit along the baseboard on two walls of my office, and at a few strategic locations on the backs of a desk or three. Each clip has a 1" square plastic plate mounted with a very strong self-adhesive so you just peel and stick 'em. (Position each clip properly the first time because these little suckers don't come off easily, and that's a good feature!) The front side of the plate sports a ratcheted ring that you can quickly pop open or lock closed. The ring diameter is slightly less than 1". They come 5 in a box for $2.99/box. I opted to space them 12" apart, closer in corners to minimize the tension on any given clip. $19.42, ka-ching, and I was done. Amazing! I can't recommend these highly enough.

The rest was easy: a couple of Curtis cable organizers (part no. C01) for odd locations that didn't warrant the larger clip, that bag of cable ties I mentioned earlier, and a small wire cutter. Keep extra cable neatly coiled and tied off at each end, and you're in business. Check these and other accessories out at the Curtis Web site:
http://www.curtis.com

How do you keep your office tidy and your PC cables from becoming a treacherous maze? I'd like to hear from you.