Fuck firewire. Glad it's dead. USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.
this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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ThinkPad gang laughing in redundant tf ports
Wow is that firewire? Haven't seen that in a while
Honestly for some specific use cases where the computer being very light is needed, this is great, but the fact every mac has this now is a little crazy.
Yeah, but at least they permit you to use the right mouse button.
USB-C is awesome though. I carry one charger amd dongle for HDMI and ethernet. It serves my many devices including Steam Deck, phone and laptop.
It is pretty flexible. But ethernet, displayport, 3.5mm, etc require an adapter. Plus, usb-c's bandwidth is typically 40gbps max, whereas DisplayPort is 80gbps, for example. Not to mention that the number of ports is way lower than it used to be.
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I am happy that things have converged over time to a single, truly versatile multi-bus capable port (USB-C/Thunderbolt 3) ... however, the vendors IMHO should be legally bound to supply down-converters for all the peripherals that used the older buses for the next 10 years, transitively for 2 generations of buses.
If USB-C supports bus 'X', then there should be inexpensive and easy to purchase down-converters from USB-C to 'X'. If Bus 'X' replaced bus 'Y' in the last 10 years then there should be a down-converter available from bus 'X' to 'Y'.
One problematic example is Firewire.. Apple used to make Thunderbolt-2-to-Firewire800 dongles, but they stopped and now they're rare as hens' teeth and ungodly-expensive.
They still sell Thunderbolt-3-to-2 dongles, but how long will they keep selling those?
Oh, and while I'm wishing for ponies, the drivers/specifications for all such adapters should be open-source and royalty-free.
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Back in the ‘90’s, they had every port you could imagine, and some STILL felt the need to use a docking station. You really can’t please everyone. I actually like the streamlined setup more these days. Because I’d rather have ports I actually use and that are fairly standardised, as opposed to a bunch of others that are of no use.
I never used most of the ports on my 90’s laptops. Never used a parallel port, PS2, never used the PCMCIA card slot, etc.
All I really need is a full sized HDMI, a few USB-C’s and one or two A’s for convenience.
My brand new ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 has HDMI, two USB-A 5Gbps ports, a headset jack, a half-height Ethernet port, as well as two thunderbolt 4 ports and an optional smartcard reader.
I agree that Apple kinda inadvertently ruined the port selection on many laptops for a while but it's gotten better over the years; even Apple brought back HDMI and SD-Card readers.
I love it personally. At work I have two monitors, networking, mouse and keyboard all going through one port. So much easier in my opinion.