USB standards group naming and branding continue to be the worst.
USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
191–200 of 498 posts
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#192Plus, if you thread the cable through your hot dog, it will be warm in time for lunch. Meanwhile, Apple's M1 chip is showing us that 240 watt laptops are the problem, not the solution...
For the record, the M1's GPU performance doesn't even start to compete with the 2021 laptop market, much less the 2014 one. GPUs have always been the biggest power draw in these laptops, and it's honestly no surprise that Apple can cut their power consumption down to 10w when their GPU is as pathetic as it is.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't had to delve into the world of trying to find an appropriate USB-C cable until fairly recently. I didn't actually understand the situation thinking a replacement USB-C cable should just work. Oh hell no and none of the packaging actually explains what features a cable supports, none of them actually explain what the cable is actually compatible with. The little android logo doesn't mean shit. Sure, you migh…
Try finding any accessory that has USBC Its been over 5 years already If your phone is about to die because yiu checked out of a hotel in the morning and your flight is at night and you are just cruising around in a car, you will not be able to stop anywhere and get a USBC car charger. So anyway LPT: get USBC accessories on Amazon in advance and dont rely on them to have any particular feature of quality control.
I've seen USB-C cables for sale at most gas station convenience stores, both C to C and C to A. I've seen lots with car 12V to USB-C as well. They're not rare around me.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's a bit of tragedy. Resistor style stripes on cables would be fun, a stripe for each feature such as bandwidth, power, etc; perhaps already suggested (and ignored). Though complement for ports would be trickier. Embossing symbols in the style of thunderbolt might be the way to go, even if the standard is not fully adopted.
Ha, I love the color idea.
This is terrible for colorblind people.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, the flipside is that Thunderbolt delivers genuinely cutting-edge interconnect capabilities. I can run two 4K60 displays and a dozen peripheral devices, and charge my laptop, all via a single cable off of my $100 Thunderbolt 3 dock. There is no other technology that comes close to this capability at this price point.
do those screens need to be 'thunderbolt' as well? or can they just take a usb-c connection (but ... not be thunderbolt?) I have a 2019 MBP 15". Every 'dock' I've looked at seemed to indicate that "you will see mirrored screens on multiple displays" - which is not what I'd want. Perhaps all of this is because I'm 'only' using a 2 year old MBP, and this is somehow all Apple's fault? Would love to know what specific $1…
> and this is somehow all Apple's fault?
Unfortunately yes. Apple (or MacOS specifically) doesn't support DisplayPort MST, which allows using multiple displays over a single DisplayPort connector. Since non-thunderbolt usb-c video is just DisplayPort, that means many usb-c docks with multiple display outputs don't work. Now why MacOS supports multiple video outputs over Thunderbolt and doesn't support MST is beyond me, but everything else does.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe with an attached labelling machine to print the results in a way that could easily be affixed to the cable? ;) Oh, and please with an integrated wirecutter that automatically destroys cables if their results are too bad?
Heh I had a cursed micro-USB cable at the office that only carried power, no data - had fun debugging why my board did not work.
Sometimes those are useful. I've got a Canon camera which can charge by MicroUSB, but if it detects any data it doesn't engage the charger and does data only. So having a power only cable is the only way to charge it without taking the battery out and putting that on a charger.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe with an attached labelling machine to print the results in a way that could easily be affixed to the cable? ;) Oh, and please with an integrated wirecutter that automatically destroys cables if their results are too bad?
Heh I had a cursed micro-USB cable at the office that only carried power, no data - had fun debugging why my board did not work.
My micro-USB charging cable is worse than that. It appears to transfer data but it always flips a few bits. Quite surprisingly, no part of the protocol stack catches this. The cable quietly delivers slightly broken files.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#198Apple and Microsoft's Surface had (does the Surface still have?) the perfect connector - the Magsafe. The more we dig into this power over USB-C garbage, the farther away we go from that perfection. The patent expiration cannot come soon enough, I seriously hope all portable device vendors bring it back.
There are already plenty magnetic USB cables, most will only carry power or maybe USB 2.0 though
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#199That's arc welding power, 50 volts at 5 amps. I fail to see how a connector is going to last more than a few cycles under load. Also, don't use that near anything flammable.
Arc welding is typically 50-500 amps. Presumably this would be a negotiated system like USB-PD, where only a tiny amount of power is available at connection and with pins physically configured to ensure breaking connection in order you may be able to shut down the higher power before the main contacts disengage).
You can TIG weld down to 5-10A range...
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#200I look forward to USB 4.1a Type C.2 Phase iii.b Gen 3E and the 482646282 different cable capability combinations that all plug in and have no distinction of those capabilities whatsoever. I also look forward to all the necessary and helpful posts telling me how the identical ports on my laptop are in fact diffferent despite their identical appearance. But at least everything uses the same plug, so that’s nice.
It actually is sort of nice, because "works" isn't binary. It's nice to be able to charge a laptop with what you have, even if it doesn't charge quite as fast. You can transfer data over a cable at lower speeds even if it doesn't run at top speed. Using the "right" cable is performance optimization. This isn't like the old days when plugging things in the wrong way might damage your machine.
The old days being 2018? https://bgr.com/entertainment/nintendo-switch-charging-cable...