Comment by ferguess_k 2 days ago
The thing is, everything I bought don't use those ports. I have to buy a new keyboard and a new mouse (wireless mouses also need a driver dongle) for the ports.
And what is worse? New laptops have less ports than the older ones. That 5550 only has 3 ports and 1 is for charging. If I want to mount an external hard drive, I need to bring a hub.
What again, looks like everyone is doing that, so yeah, better embrace it.
USB-C ports have so many features that require extra connections, which makes them costly. And then adding extra ports without those features gets confusing to the end user if it can't properly communicated.
Imagine having 4 USB-C ports, but 2 of them are USB 2.0 only. Like that but more complicated because it's a feature on a separate controller. Video out, which requires additional connections to the GPU. Power input, done through a USB-PD controller. PCI-E tunneling, taking up PCI-E lanes from the CPU.
Even looking at the Framework Laptop: https://frame.work/laptop16?tab=specs , only the Nvidia GPU USB-C port supports charging while the AMD one doesn't. Look at the section on the "6x user-selectable Expansion Cards" where they list the capabilities of the individual ports. I think different specs for those USB-C ports are less egregious because the idea is to install an expansion card, but giving 6 different USB-C ports like that to a regular user sounds like a bad idea.
> Imagine having 4 USB-C ports, but 2 of them are USB 2.0 only
To be fair, that's already how PC laptops are - they have USB-A ports with random colors and symbols on them that you need to figure out which is the good one, so I don't see why they aren't doing the same with USB-C.
I don't think it's the same because the only USB-A difference was speed. Maybe yellow charging port. And USB 2.0 is still 'working'
That's not the case with the other features I've mentioned.
I have a macbook pro. It has 3x USB-C, HDMI, a magsafe charger port, SD slot and audio jack.
I love having a dock, it means I get to hide all the wires behind the desk, and plug the laptop into power, two screens and all the other peripherals with a single cable.
Rapid change and new things are an integral part of tech especially laptops. This is a strange complaint
Rapid change and new things are an integral part of planned obsolescence and needing to justify your job to upper management. A sufficiently-repairable laptop with 16 gigs of RAM has absolutely no reason not to work for at least a decade, ideally longer.
The port count is a real problem on modern laptops. I like USB-C, but why are there so few of them? Having to have a hub for basic things is really annoying.