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To make our laptops look clean and minimalistic, they made us buy a bunch of dongles and adapters.
Screw it, I’m buying a rugged laptop with the thickness of a desktop PC next
I dont know why this is controversial. I’m way more happy with 4x USB-C, than 5 unique ports, that will likely never be used on a regular basis, even when they were relevant
USB-C does a lot of heavy lifting. Also, MagSafe™ is still there. A little surprised there is also a SD card slot. And a HDMI port. Not complaining about their inclusion, and I do use them regularly, but why did the dongle company give these to us?
I’m on the other side wishing peripherals would catch up and all become USB-C already. I’m tired of USB-A.
Dude, those two little UBS-C ports do 50x what the ports on the bottom laptop could do
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.
I have a ton of the bottom three laptops, wanna trade for the shitty one up top?
My thinkpad is also light in the connectivity area and I absolutely adore the $30 dock I got for it. Click the laptop in place and LAN, displays, audio, power, keyboard, mouse, external storage are connected instantly; if I had to connect each one separately, multiple times per day, I’d go insane.
Not all. If I dont get 2 USB-A ports, I ain’t buying. Fortunately thinkpads still have them
Fuck firewire. Glad it’s dead. USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.
USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.
I would agree with you if there were a simple way to tell what the USB-C cable I have in my hand can be used for without knowing beforehand. Otherwise, for example, I don’t know whether the USB-C cable will charge my device or not. There should have been a simple way to label them for usage that was baked into the standard. As it is, the concept is terrific, but the execution can be extremely frustrating.
Buying a basic, no-frills USB-C cable from a reputable tech manufacturer all but guarantees that it’ll work for essentially any purpose. Of course the shoddy pack-in cables included with a cheap device purchase won’t work well.
I replaced every USB-C-to-C or -A-to-C cable and brick in my house and carry bag with a very low cost Anker cable (except the ones that came with my Google products, those are fine), and now anything charges on any cable.
You wouldn’t say that a razor sucked just because the cheap replacement blades you bought at the dollar store nicked your face, or that a pan was too confusing because the dog food you cooked in it didn’t taste good. So too it is not the fault of USB-C that poorly manufactured charging bricks and cables exist. The standard still works; in fact, it works so well that unethical companies are flooding the market with crap.
Hey that’s a fair point. Funny how often good ideas are kneecapped by crap executions.
I’m pretty sure the phrase “kneecapped by crap executions” is in the USB working groups’s charter. It’s like one of their core guiding principles.
Burn all the USBC cables with fire except PD. The top PD cable does everything the lower cable does.
IDK I’ve had PD cables that looked good for a while but turns out their data rate was basically USB2. It seems no matter what rule of thumb I try there are always weird caveats.
No, I’m not bitter, why would you ask that?
There are many PD cables that are bad for doing data.
Correct. The other comment is giving bad advice.
Both power delivery and bandwidth are backwards compatible, but they are independent specifications on USB-C cables. You can even get PD capable USB-C cables that don’t transmit data at all.
Also, that’s not true for Thunderbolt cables. Each of the 5 versions have specific data and power delivery minimum and maximum specifications.
You forgot thunderbolt and usb4 exists now
You forgot thunderbolt and usb4 exists now
You can buy a single cable that does 40GB and USB4 and charges at 240w.
Do not all USB C cables have the capability to do Power Delivery? I thought it was up to the port you plugged it in to support it?
Nope. My daughter is notorious for mixing up cables when they come out of the brick. Some charge her tablet, some are for data transfer, some charge other devices but not her tablet. It’s super confusing. I had to start labeling them for her.
Come to think of it, all the USB C cables I have are from phone and device chargers so I just took it for granted. Good to know. Thanks for sharing some knowledge with me
USB-c cables can vary drastically. Power delivery alone ranges from less than 1 amp at 5 volts to over 5 amps at 20 volts. That’s 5 watts of power on the low end to 100 watts of power on the high end and sometimes more. When a cable meant to run at 5 watts has over 100 watts of power run through, the wires get really hot and could catch fire. The charger typically needs to talk to a very small chip in the high power cables for the cables to say, yes I can handle the power. Really cheap chargers might just push that power out regardless. So while the USB-c form factor is the one plug to rule them all, the actual execution is a fucking mess.
Agreed. They should be labeled with the rating.
This little guy works wonders for me.
Oh very cool! And you can’t beat that price. Thanks.
No problem! Oh, and use a charger/power supply for the input. It’ll work on a computer port, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Yeah, I wouldn’t trust it on a computer port. I’d just plug it into a power brick.
Yeah, I totally get that there is a need for cheap power only cables, but why are there what feels like 30 different data “standards”. Just gimme power-only, data, and fast-data. And yeah, in 2 years there’ll be a faster data protocol, so what, that’s then fast-data24, fast-data26, etc. and manufacturers have to use a specific pictogram to label them according to the highest standard they fulfill.
I would agree with you if there were a simple way to tell what the USB-C cable I have in my hand
https://caberqu.com/home/39-ble-caberqu-0611816327412.html
This would do it.
Damn, check out the price of the thing someone else linked to at AliExpress for a fraction of that price. But having to spend money on that should not be necessary.
That aliexpress device doesn’t tell you what wattage or data speed the cable will max out doing. Just what wattage it’s currently doing (to which you’d need to make sure that the device you’re testing with on the other side is capable and not having it’s own issues). Also can’t tell you if the cable is have intermittent problems. If all you care about is wattage, then fine. But I find myself caring more about the supported data speeds and quality of the cable.
But yes, I agree that cables should just be marked what they’re rated for… However it’s possible well built cables exceed that spec and could do better than they’re claiming which just puts us in the same boat of not really knowing.
Edit: oh! and that aliexpress tester is only 4 lines(usb2.0 basically)… usb 3.0 in type c is 24 pins… You’re not testing jack shit on that aliexpress. The device I linked will actually map the pins in the cable and will find you breaks as well.
I agree with USB-C, but there are still a million USB-A devices I need to use, and I can’t be bothered to buy adapters for all of them. And a USB hub is annoying.
Plus, having 1-2 USB-C ports only is never gonna be enough. If they are serious about it, why not have 5?
Yeah, I’d love at least one USB A type cause most of the peripherals I own use that.
What does ‘anti-top shell design’ mean?
I bought some adaptors in China for around $0.50 each. It really isn’t that big of a deal
You can’t buy a UCB-C Wifi dongle that last time I checked. You have to buy a c-to-a adapter, then use a usb-a wifi dongle. It’s nuts that those don’t exist.
Genuine question - what device do you have that has USB-C ports, no USB-A ports, doesn’t have WiFi, but supports the dongle?
Pinetab2 shipped with a wifi chip without any Linux drivers. The drivers eventually got made, but before that, you needed a USB dongle with Ethernet or a adapter.
I would also like a USB-c wifi dongle for tech support reasons. Sometimes, the wifi hardware fails and you need a quick replacement to figure out what happened.
Why do you need a wifi dongle when wifi is built into every single laptop sold?
Some applications need very specific drivers and protocols that aren’t compatible with normal chips. Or you have to connect to a device via WiFi but still need internet. Also long range WiFi antennas are amazing.
My first thought was hacking.
As I said, specific “applications” :D
Maybe the preferred Linux distro doesn’t work with them. I had to use another distro for a while because Debian didn’t immediately support the card, but there are apparently cases where the internal card just permanently wouldn’t work (like in fully free software distros). I would rather replace the card inside the laptop than use a dongle, but idk islf this xan always be the answer.
Nah, USB-A was the best since it replaced serial ports (esp PS/2, which was much harder to plug in) and outlived/outclassed FireWire. USB-C is the best thing since HDM (screw you VGA amd DVI), which was the best since USB-A.
I hated when mice became the primary interface to computers, and I still do.
tell me you use i3 without telling me you use i3
Is this for real?
Even for like 20 years after mousing became the primary interface, you could still navigate much faster using keyboard shortcuts / accelerator keys. Application designers no longer consider that feature. Now you are obliged to constantly take your fingers off home position, find the mouse, move it 3cm, aim it carefully, click, and move your hand back to home position, an operation taking a couple of seconds or more, when the equivalent keyboard commands could have been issued in a couple hundred milliseconds.
That functionality (first necessary, then required by guidelines, then expected, and then still usual) disciplined UI designers to make things doable in a clear sequence of actions.
Now they think any ape can make a UI if it knows the new shiny buzzwords like “material design” or “air” or whatever. And they do! Except humans can’t use those UIs.
BTW, about their “air”. One can look at ancient UI paradigms, specifically SunView, OpenLook and Motif (I’m currently excited about Sun history again), Windows 3.*, and also Win9x (with WinXP being more or less inside the same paradigm). And one can see that of these only Motif had anything resembling their “air”. And Motif is generally considered clunky and less usable than the rest of the mentioned (I personally consider OpenLook the best), but compared to modern UIs even Motif does that “air” part the way it seems to make some sense, and feels less clunky, making me wonder how is that even possible.
FFS, modern UI designers don’t even think it’s necessary to clearly and consistently separate buttons and links from text.
And also - freedom in Web and UI design has proven to be a mistake. UIs should be native. Web browsers should display pages adaptively (we have such and such blocks of text and such and such links), their appearance should be decided on the client and be native too, except pictures. Gemini is the right way to go for the Web.
I feel your pain and irrelevancy with crystalline clarity. The world isn’t interested in doing things the right way, or even in a good way; consumers are too perversely enthralled by capital’s interests. I kind of hate that computers ever became a consumer good.
I love how deeply nerdy Lemmy is. I’m a bit of a nerd but I’m not “mice were a mistake” nerd.
I don’t think mice were a mistake, but they’re worse for most of the tasks I do. I’m a software engineer and I suck at art, so I just need to write, compile, and test code.
There are some things a mouse is way better for:
- drawing (well, a drawing tablet is better)
- 3d modeling
- editing photos
- first person shooters (KB works fine for OG Doom though)
- bulk file operations (a decent KB interface could work though)
But for almost everything else, I prefer a keyboard.
And while we’re on a tangent, I hate WASD, why shift my fingers over from the normal home row position? It should be ESDF, which feels way more natural…
Thanks, I got you beat on ESDF though because i’m a RDFG man, since playing counter strike 1.6. With WASD they usually put crouch or something on ctrl but my pinky has a hard time stretching down there, but on RDFG my pinky has easy access to QW AS ZX, and tab caps and shift with a little stretch. It’s come in handy when playing games with a lot of keybinds.
Pfff, minutes after trying to minimize your nerdiness, you post this confession.
What pisses me off even more is many games bind to the letter instead of physical key position (e.g. key code), so alternative layouts get a big middle finger. I use Dvorak, and I’ve quit fighting and just switch to QWERTY for games.
I don’t have a problem with hitting control (I guess I have big hands), but I totally agree that default key binds largely suck. I wish games came with a handful of popular ones, and bound to key codes so hs Dvorak users (or international users) didn’t have to keep switching to QWERTY.
I am using ESDF because my “A” key stopped being as responsive, didn’t expect someone to do this on purpose!
It’s just more ergonomic. My hands are already there, why shift them? Oh, and use QAZ instead of Tab, Shift, and Ctrl, they’re right there.
I always rebind to ESDF if the game doesn’t do stupid things preventing it from being practical. The addition of the 1QAZ strip being available to the pinky is a killer feature all on its own. I typically use that for weapon switching, instead of having to stretch up to 1234 and take my fingers off the movement keys.
Tablets are better than mice at drawing, modelling, and photo editing. Mice are good for first person shooters. Game controllers are better for most other games. You can mouse in
dired-modei guess, if you’re a casual.The problem is they generally use E and F for something, which results in a cascade of rebinding.
And yeah, tablets are better, but they’re also more expensive and don’t do other mice things. For how rarely I do 3D modeling and whatnot (pretty rare), making sure my mouse has a middle button is plenty.
And yeah, I much prefer controller, even for FPS since I don’t play competitively (even then, I’ve seen awesome videos about gyro aiming).
It’s also an age thing. My visual processing is getting worse and worse. My disorientation facing a busy screen with literally thousands of objects that can be interacted with by mouse is a cognitive drain compared to a textual interface where I do most of the work abstractly without having to use visual processing at all. Like reading a book vs watching a movie.
I probably have a lot more experience using pre-mouse era computers than most people. It’s like being asked to start using a different language when you are 20. Yeah, you’ll become perfectly fluent for a couple decades… but you’ll also lose that language first when you get old.
I have noticed that millenials navigate multilayer mouse interfaces (like going down a few chained drop down menus) way faster than I ever did. And zoomers use touch screen keyboards almost as well as I ever touchtyped. Brains are only plastic to a degree, and it just plain feels good to use all those neurons that you first laid down when you were young and your mind was infinite.
I just use a mouse to type in stuff using the on screen keyboard. It’s annoying having to take the ball out and clean it, but you get used to it.
I used the logitech optical trackball mouse for quite a few years! Did not play a lot of FPS a that time…
I love trackballs (except that Kensington above. It was basically a pinch your skin torture device.) I still use the Logitech M570 trackball. It’s pretty good.
My favorite of all time though was the Logitech Trackman Vista. Absolutely perfect form factor that Logitech just gave up on one day and I will never know why.
Still use one to control the PC when i’m in bed. =)
US military: “Perfection.”
Hey they made new technology where you can just yell at the computer and it’ll understand 60% of what you’re saying.
Reminds me of the ancient technology where you just kick it until you get a more tractable problem.
I kept every mouse ball I ever obtained and display them in my china cabinet.
When I’m “computering” for efficiency, I don’t take my hands off the keyboard. Half of my job is on a standard keyboard, and so familiarizing myself with all the shortcuts and whatnot saves a lot of time versus having to travel back and forth to a mouse or track pad.
When I am just satisfying the dopamine urges, it’s mouse all the way.
Sure. It’s a lowest common denominator interface. With all that comes with that.
Lowest common denominator interface is definitely touch screen, then maybe game controllers but I love those for some games.
Edit - TV remotes!
Sure, it’s not 100% better in all situations. But when you’re unfamiliar with something, almost universally, it’s far more intuitive.
And this doesn’t even take into account things like gaming. I also can’t imagine trying to do visual design things solely with the computer. Like any type of drawing or schematic design.
Being pretty adept at using the keyboard, I’m often frustrated when I find out that the only way to do something is by mouse when there appears that there should be an easy way to do it by keyboard. But, man, I can’t imagine longing for the days before the mouse.
Yes, the mouse is useful in many situations (esp 3d modeling), so I don’t think anyone is arguing that it shouldn’t exist.
The problem, however, is that we’ve standardized on it for everything, to the point where software often ignores a better KB-driven workflow because the mouse one is good enough. “When all you have is a hammer…”
We’ve prioritized “intuitive” over “efficient.” There’s nothing wrong with learning to properly use a tool, and it’s sad that we don’t expect users to put in that modicum of effort. In the 80s and 90s, that’s just how things were, you either learn the tools (often with a handbook) or you don’t use them. The net result was a populace that didn’t need support as much, because they were used to reading the docs. If a component died, the docs would tell you how to diagnose and fix it. These days, those docs just don’t exist, so if the solution isn’t intuitive, you replace it (both hardware and software).
That’s where this frustration comes from. Making things intuitive also means reducing the average person’s understanding of their tools, and the mouse is a symptom of that shift.
I feel that.
Sounds like I’m glad “home row” style typing fell out of favour. It may be the theoretically fastest way to type eventually, but it seems to lead to pretty rigid behaviour. Adapting to new things as they come along and changing your flow to move with them instead of against them is just a much more comfortable way to live. Even if I only type 80% as fast.
I have no idea what you mean by “fell out of favour”. Does your keyboard not have pips on F and J? People still touch type. Dunno what to tell you.
You’re getting hung up on “home row”. You still have to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse and back. It’s the same problem, whether or not you know how to type well and stare at your hands, except now you have to add steps for “look at the screen” and “look back at your hands”.
Fell out of favour in that it isn’t taught as “the correct way to type” any more. Largely because most devices you type on now wouldn’t even have physical keys. So learning home row typing for the occasional time the thing you are typing on is a physical full sized keyboard just disrupts the flow of everything else.
Being perfectly optimal isn’t as productive as it feels, especially when it leads to resistance to change and adapt.
Home row is absolutely still taught as the “correct” way to type. Source: kids are in elementary school
Yes, it is taught. If you take a typing course, you will be taught to use home row. What you mean is, you were never taught to type because we don’t teach that in school anymore. If you do most your typing on a touch screen, I have to imagine: you are so young. In 20 years when no one is using a touch screen to enter text anymore (but likely still use physical keyboards), you will remember this conversation, and have some greater insight.
Whether or not you know how to touch type, in any situation where there is a mouse, THERE IS A PHYSICAL KEYBOARD. Not knowing how to touch type just makes the task switching overhead greater.
So I see you clearly haven’t heard of i3, sway or hyperland …
I’ve used ion, ratpoison, i3, sawfish, and other tiling window managers for fifteen or more years, all totaled up. There is a great deal of pressure to use a modern desktop environment and it’s a lot of work maintaining my janky bespoke desktop environment functions necessary for a few critical applications. I use KDE’s tiling features and keyboard shortcuts, but it’s a double edged sword because I have to disable all window manager bindings in (for example) Blender and
emacsto avoid shadowing important features. Actually, I have re-implemented a lot of my custom KDE shortcuts as emacs bindings as well, so they still work when emacs has the focus. Here’s one:(cl-flet ((switch-to (name) (lambda () (interactive) (shell-command (concat "wmctrl -a " name))))) (global-set-key (kbd "s-1") (switch-to "librewolf")) (global-set-key (kbd "s-2") (switch-to "konsole")) (global-set-key (kbd "s-3") (switch-to "signal")) (global-set-key (kbd "s-4") (switch-to "darktable")) (global-set-key (kbd "s-5") (switch-to "emacs")))For my wm+Emacs work, I unified the shortcuts by calling a separate go bin that checks if the active window is Emacs or not. If it is, it sends the command to the Emacs Daemon. If it’s not it sends the command to i3. For directional commands like move focus, first check it there’s an Emacs window to that side, if not send the command to i3.
The things we have to go through just to meet basic needs.
How are you redirecting all input through your custom exec? Is that an i3 feature?
why have I made that anonymous function
interactive??Edit: Oh I think anything you bind to a key has to be
interactive.
To an extent. Early 90’s I could navigate WordPerfect in DOS faster than I’ve ever been able to work in MS Word, because it was all keyboard even before I learned proper home key 10 finger typing in high school. Technically my first word processor was Wordstar on one of those Osborne “portable” computers with the 5-inch screen when I was a young kid, but Wordperfect was what I did my first real ‘word processing’ on when I started using it for school projects. So I might just be older in that ‘how do you do fellow kids’ in this sort of discussion.
To this day, I still prefer mc (Midnight Commander, linux flavored recreation of Norton Commander that does have a Windows port (YMMV on the win port)) to navigate filesystems for non-automated file management.
I’ve been thoroughly conditioned for mouse use since the mid-late 90s (I call it my Warcraft-Quake era, we still used keyboard only for Doom 1/2 back in the early days), and I feel like it’s a crutch when I’m trying to do productive work instead of gaming. When I spend a few days working using remote shells, I definitely notice a speed increase. Then a few days later I lose it all again when I’m back on that mouse cursor flow brain.
I call it my Warcraft-Quake era, we still used keyboard only for Doom 1/2 back in the early days
This is my main reason for not pining for the days before the mouse: it made gaming 100000x better. I remember when we first started playing quake, a lot of the guys swore by the keyboard only, until I regularly destroyed them with the mouse. . .and they all switched over.
I’ve also done a lot of graphic design, photo-editing, schematic design, etc. . . and can’t imagine having to do that solely with the keyboard (but again, I’m often like “why isn’t there a keyboard shortcut for this?”).
Also, when it comes to productivity, I guess it depends on what you are doing because usually my big hurdle is not how quickly I can do actions (that is usually more important in video games, tbh), the big hurdle is sitting down and thinking about how to do it correctly.
You have passed the test. We can be friends.
I agree, I would just like to have more of them.
Buy dongles and splitter dongles.
we need 7 firewire ports and micro dvi ports with 1 mini usb
The annoying thing is they’re not even that much thinner. They’ve just reshaped the edge to make it look like there isn’t room for real ports.
To be fair, USB-C, especially with Thunderbolt, is much more universal. There are adapters for pretty much every “legacy” port out there so if you really need FireWire you can have it, but it’s clear why FireWire isn’t built into the laptop itself anymore.
The top MacBook Pro is also the 2016+ pre Apple Silicon chassis (that was also used with M chips, but sort of as a leftover), while the newer MacBook Pro chassis at least brought back HDMI and an SD card reader (and MagSafe as a dedicated charging port, although USB-C still works fine for that).
Considering modern “docking” solutions only need a single USB-C/Thunderbolt cable for everything, these additional ports only matter when on the go. HDMI comes in handy for presentations for example.
I’d love to see at least a single USB-A port on the MacBook Pro, but that’s likely never coming back. USB-C to A adapters exist though, so it’s not a huge deal. Ethernet can be handy as well, but most use cases for that are docked anyway.
I like the Framework concept the most, also “only” 4 ports (on the 13" at least, plus a built-in combo jack), but using adapter cards you can configure it to whatever you need at that point in time and the cards slide into the chassis instead of sticking out like dongles would. I usually go for one USB-C/Thunderbolt on either side (so charging works on either side), a single USB-A and video out in the form of DisplayPort or HDMI. Sometimes I swap the video out (that also works via USB-C obviously) for Ethernet, even though the Ethernet card sticks out. For a (retro) LAN party, I used 1 USB-C, USB-A (with a 4-port hub for wired peripherals), DisplayPort and Ethernet.
All you need is a couple of USB-C ports and maybe a HDMI port on most modern laptops. More is good but not a requirement.
Framework users: “Yeah, but my USB-C ports are recessed!”
ok but where’s the pcmcia slot! /sees myself out
It’s SDCARD since like 1999. Sheesh, get current mate! 🤣
That’s hot af
In case you’re not aware, that’s a Framework laptop.
One more reason for me to get one. Dammit.
Is it still owned by LTT? I don’t particularly like this LTT though.
Owned? The kid just bought stock.
Nowhere near owned. LTT made a small investment.
I’ll be in my bunk.
Framework baby!!!
Oh my god
Love mine.
That’s the way to do it. I just wish Framework had a better selection of modules available and had more module bays on their laptops.
Is a dongle that doesn’t dangle even really a dongle at all?
Doubtful.
no body shaming please
What module would you like to have.
I would like RS-232 and RS-485 modules and a full size SD card reader would be nice too. It’s probably something I would end up building myself if I get a Framework laptop.
Edit: It looks like they have an SD card module now, nice.
I 3d printed a dongle that has a Logitech receiver in it. All their design files are online, so you can make your own pretty easily.
Oh, damn, that’s a game changing idea there.
What would you do with RS-232 and RS-485?
Hook up my US Robotics 56k modem and dial up to the internet, where I can chat with hot babes
After your training to become a cage fighter, I presume?
Time travel
I have a 485 adapter in my bag for BACnet and Modbus communications.
-485 is superior. Everyone knows it
And what the hell, add RS-422 while you’re at it. And a parallel port! And the left side expansion port they used to have on the Amiga 500 and 1000!
And some ISDN BRI ports. And ATM and FDDI. And something I can do X.25 over. Oh, and Token Ring.
Why are the modules so wide?
I guess they have to be the same, so they all have to be the maximum width of anything you might want to put in there.
I have a framework, and while this system is pretty cool, I don’t change the cards often and I only have 4 cards. I’d rather have some more built-in ports too.
I don’t change them ever. But I have the exact set of ports I need now
What a waste of chassis space.
This is the way
