Technical
The ITE standards allow for the power cord to be the official disconnect.
However, this does involve a required "installation instruction". See the
second part of 1.7.2.
When it was common for most ITE to have fixed power cords, this meant
that the disconnect could be the plug at the wall outlet. Admittedly, these
are seldom "easily accessible" in the typical PC workstation, with a rat's
nest of wires and dust bunnies under the workstation.
However, given the global economy, many ITE products use detachable
power cords (providing for the locally required cord), where the "disconnect"
may be considered at the side or rear of the unit, i.e an arm's length away.
Financial
True rated disconnect switches are not cheap. Purchasers of ITE bear the
final costs of these in products. With so many ITE products selling for $50
to a few hundred dollars, the markup is significant. This is one practical
reason for using power cords as disconnect devices.
Philosophical
Users have proven time and again that they will use electrical appliances
(including ITE) as they please, not how the standards, manuals, and labels
indicate. When our site produced commercial keyboards for IBM and other
manufacturers, the warranty return rate was extremely low. This rate shot
up when we placed these in consumer outlets. On investigation, we learned
of users soaking keyboards in soapy water to remove spilled coke residue,
removing all keycaps to "clean" the keyboard and not being able to replace
them, etc.
George Alspaugh
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