This is where my EE skills devolve a bit. My current working theory on the principle of cable gauge is that the larger the current passing through the wire, the larger the gauge needed to support the current, and possibly the resistance of the wire increases proportionately to the current, but disproportionately to the gauge of the wire? To further, is it true that voltage doesn't affect any of this?
I never went to school for this (yet) so I am working on extrapolated knowledge here.
In terms of total power, US 120V 15A sockets are limited to 1650W (if W = V*A, apparently there's something to do with resistance or load, or batteries, idk, if I actually was properly on topic in this forum, I would be a total idiot with what I say).
We actually own a kettle which (claims) to draw 1600W. I think it's closer to 1200W, but either way, is nothing like the snap instant kettles I've seen in Germany (where I believe most circuits are rated for 230V 16A?). It's faster than using a stove kettle (which is what most Americans use, or a microwave). People get really confused that we don't have many electric kettles, and I personally don't use it for anything but heating up my noodles, as tea isn't massively popular here. It's still drunk, and people use different sorts of methods for hot water, but we don't actually tend to have a need for a massively dedicated solution.
We do have egg plates, though, which go unused because whenever we eat eggs they are almost always fried, and soft boiled eggs haven't been made in this house for years. We also just eat hard boiled eggs on a regular plate (or in a salad).
Man, I'm bad at moving off topic. Let me fix that. I actually use floppies quite a lot, as they are easy to move over things like drivers and really small files, especially when the only other alternative is burning a CD (some of my machines don't have DVD rewriters, and CD-RWs are painful to use). I have a 5.25 inch drive for IBM compatibles, but I never use it because it's in a combo drive which for whatever reason is always configured to use the 5.25 inch drive as drive A.
I don't have any real diskettes with anything on them to use on it anyways.