Standards often evolve in the marketplace because they make things easier on the customer. That's why one reader was particularly irate to discover that Motorola is messing with an emerging standard -- one that it helped create -- by requiring a Motorola-brand car charger be used with his new Motorola cell phone.

"It's great that manufacturers of portable devices are increasingly using a standard charger - one that can be plugged into a mini-USB connector like on the Blackberry," the reader wrote. "This means you can carry just one charger that you can use with your cell phone, GPS, etc. But now Motorola, which has been using the mini-USB chargers for many of its cell phones, has added a new wrinkle with its V325 phone. It has some sort of detection circuit that prevents a non-Motorola charger from working."

The Motorola phone comes with an AC charger, of course, so the reader did not discover the problem until he tried to re-charge it in his car. "I was using a generic USB charger that works with the Blackberry and lots of other devices," the reader wrote. "A message on the phone said 'Unauthorized Charger' and it wouldn't work. I've tried several other chargers with specs that are identical to the USB-type car charger Motorola sells, and they all produce the same 'Unauthorized Charger' message."

The reader doesn't resent the $30 Motorola wants for its car charger as much as he dislikes the idea of having to carry different chargers for different devices. After all, if he had been aware that the Motorola V325 had this charger-authorization technology, he simply would have a chosen a different phone - maybe even a different Motorola phone -- that actually supports the mini-USB standard. "Motorola has actually been one of the leaders in using these widely-available chargers with the RAZR and other models," the reader noted. "That makes it all the more frustrating they would take this approach to force us to buy only Motorola-brand chargers."