this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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I’m glad I can plug in one port and have a dual display setup, all peripherals, speakers, ethernet, charging, etc connected at my desk in one go.
If I want to leave, unplug one thing and I’m good to go.
Yup, and that's fantastic if you're working at a consistent desk or something. I have a USB-C hub at home and a USB-C monitor at work, which is pretty nice.
However, what's not nice is connecting ad-hoc. Let's say I go to an unfamiliar meeting room, HDMI is the way to go. Or if I'm going to plug in to my TV at a rental property or something. Or I'm at a friend's house and I want to transfer a bunch of data and they have a USB-A drive. I'm not going to bring a hub around with me everywhere I go, I'd prefer to just plug in whatever I need into the laptop directly.
USB-C is great, not having other options as well isn't great. Give me 2-3 USB-C ports that can all do charging, display out, and data, and also give me a handful of other ports (HDMI, USB-A, RJ-45, headphone jack, etc). It's very rare to find a laptop too thin to support it, most "thin" laptops are merely curved at the edge to make it look thin, when really it's plenty thick to support even full-fat RJ-45 (which it doesn't even need to, I've seen thin laptops with a flip-down port).
Outside the Apple world, a dock connector has been the norm way before USB C was invented.
I miss actual dock connectors. Cramming everything into a single USB-C connection has always been problematic for me. I have a lot of stuff.
My work laptop has a USB-C dock where I have Ethernet (1000mbps), three display port displays, mouse, keyboard, wireless headset dongle, and a dual head USB to displayport adapter.
That's a lot of bandwidth.
I frequently have little problems keeping everything working correctly.
Luckily, I don't push high bandwidth video though any display for work, so generally I don't see many bandwidth problems.
they start around $10 or $20. don’t think you need to waste hundreds for a few extra ports
It would be pretty annoying to have to unplug/plug in everything that the previous commenter mentioned every time you wanted to move your laptop. So for something that's meant to be a portable work station, I think it makes sense to use a stationary adapter over a bunch of individual ports on the laptop itself. It would be nice if it was common for laptops to come with an adapter that includes all the ports that are commonly used though.
Exactly my situation. My laptop has enough ports that I don't strictly need a dock. I still have and use two though, one for home and one at work
We bought some for work to trial and they cost 65€, so hardly hundreds
Few hundred? What, are you stuck in 1995?
Less than $100 for my current one, and it supports our Dell, Lenovo, and Mac (and I'm no Mac fan).
That said, you'll take my USB A ports from my cold, dead, hand.
It depends... if you have multiple hires monitors, you may need an active dock for £200+.
I'm cheap though so I use a £50 passive dock and just plug in the last monitor separately.
Yeah, mine cost $30 or so and has HDMI, USB-C PD, USB-A x2, USB-C data, and SD/micro-SD. That same one is $25 today, and there are similar options for <$20.
The one thing I really miss is RJ-45. Most reasonably priced hubs don't have it, most laptops don't have it, and I'm going to lose that dongle. I'm keeping my old ThinkPad for now in those rare cases were I need to fix my router because I messed something up.