11
exerceo
150d

Dear laptop vendors, stop wasting so much precious device estate on nothing!

This wasted physical space could easily fit in six USB ports, or four USB ports and two HDMI ports, or four USB ports and one HDMI and one LAN. Or four USB ports and two SD card slots.

> "Who the heck needs 6 USB ports?"

You don't need more USB ports… until the day you do need them comes.

> "HDMI and LAN are feature creep!"

It's "feature creep", until you need it.

> "Ever heard of USB hubs?"

While better than nothing, they are tedious to carry around and can hardly support more than one external high-power device such as an external hard drive or blu-ray drive, except if you have an external power adapter, which is even more tedious to carry.

Also, have fun closing programs until the operating system stops whining "volume is busy" just so you can unmount your external SSD and then reconnect it through a USB hub. Sounds like fun, huh?

You were playing audio from your external SSD? Too bad. Now you need to close the media player to be able to unmount the SSD, then later restart it and seek the last position. And all of that could be avoided if your laptop happened to have one more USB port.

Comments
  • 4
    Depending on chassis, that lack of ports can mean a lot more stability.

    The rest of the rant...

    *shrugs* I still have an laptop with RJ45 jack and would never wanna miss it.

    But the power argument and rest of it... Is kinda outdated. At least with the 120 W provided by USB C, it shouldn't be a problem.

    Just buy a different notebook.

    Have a pancake for the lovely grumpy mumbling.
  • 4
    It's almost as if engineers don't design them 🤔
  • 0
    @IntrusionCM USB cables and hubs still have impedance and the voltage can drop well below 5 volts, causing attached hard drives to shut down.
  • 2
    @exerceo i don't think so.

    USB 2 was 4.75 V minimum, 5 V regular.

    Spec is pretty clear in that regard.

    USB C goes up to 20 V - but the device must request it explicitly.

    From experience, most issues with voltage drop stem from power settings / driver fuckity or bad hardware.

    Cheaping out on cable or hub quality is a great way to fry your home.

    Be it lack of insulation, faulty / missing resistors or other stuff.

    I've seen simple USB 2 chargers deep frying shit. Was for a company doing China import and reselling.

    Every year at least one large testing module with surge protection and all the mumbo jumbo had to be completely replaced... Even with all protection, there was every one or two weeks some gadget that just went nuclear.

    Cheaply made hardware is terrifying. .
  • 3
    @IntrusionCM This is very true.

    I used to work repairing laptops some 25 years ago and once you took the shell off, some of them you almost dared not lay down for fear they would break, especially old HP laptops.

    Just like modern phones, ever hole in the side is a weak spot.

    Then you have the other problem with power. Every extra USB port needs to be powered meaning the PSU needs to have extra capacity which means more heat and less battery power.

    So it’s not just the ports.

    And finally, depending on model it could be quite crowded in there ;)

    More modern should have more spare but it could be that they have more battery.
  • 3
    Four full usb-c parts and a mini-jack I can live with. A lot of 13 inch laptops now come with just two usb-c ports. This shit is ridiculous.
  • 1
    Apple laptops are cringe and were cringe
  • 4
    You know it's not just a matter of drilling holes where there's space though.
  • 3
    @ostream you have Full-DungHole?
  • 1
    Also sorta off topic but idk who came up with the idea that having a light and small laptop was the best thing in the world. I wish they were a little bit more bigger and heavier.
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