problem Everywhere I've worked in the last 25 years has always had some (although to be fair, sometimes not enough) standard power sockets on their desks. Where I am working at the moment does have some unusual power sockets, but that is because the workstations are on a central UPS, and the powers that be don't want other devices plugged into that supply. There are, however, at least two ordinary sockets per desk. I do remember the bad-old days, however, when desks were free-standing pieces of furniture without a provision for power, and all that was available were wall sockets. But then, back in those days you were lucky if you had a phone on your desk. There was no desktop electrical equipment unless you had a printing calculator or a mains powered dictaphone, or a lamp! (BTW, these were the days of batch environments, with jobs being written using punch-card decks, and output on fan-fold paper). At one place I worked, an office refit that was done for a building that was originally built in the '70s, and modern desk furniture was installed, but they didn't upgrade the floor electrical wiring. Once they started putting PCs with large CRT monitors on every desk, they found that the floor wiring presented a fire risk because of excessive power draw. Electrical engineers came around one day with spot temperature meters looking for hotspots, and then isolated about a third of the floor from the power until they could re-wire the whole